When you’ve slept alone for several years, you change your sleeping habits. I frequently pay homage to the Victorians for keeping separate bedchambers. There is something sexy and clandestine about having to enter your husband’s bedroom in the dark of night. Having gossipy servants that notice that the Lady Elizabeth didn’t sleep in her own bed again last night were assist in this fantasy. Considering the severity of modern sleep disorders, the concept of adjoining bedrooms might resurface. She can sleep with her C-PAP machine and he can roam about in his insomnia without growing contempt for their partner.
I have shifted my own sleeping habits over the last five years. I sleep diagonally across the bed. If I were to ever had a regular sleeping partner I’d have to be more equitable with the pillows, since I keep all the “good pillows” for myself. I build a pillow bumper all around me which, if I had a bed partner, would feel like a down and feather force field. I also like a cold room and lots of covers which is fine if the bed doesn’t have another heat source. Add another body radiating heat and my clothes to covers and pillow ratio is out of balance. I sleep solo so I get the good night stand and the clock radio set to my station and my wake up time. I am also on the side with the closest, straightest path to the bathroom. If I want to get up at 3:18am and check my text messages, send text messages, check Facebook or fix and bring a bowl of Cheerios back to bed, I have no worries about my crunching waking anyone. I can sleep in my poofy socks without concern they are unflattering. In fact, I sleep in what is practical and comfortable. My Sneaky Ninja t-shirt and canary yellow velour drawstring jammie pants will never help me grace a pin up poster, but I sleep like a stone in them; because I sleep alone, I have no regard for how mismatched and un-sexy they are.
But, there is some very attractive possibilities to the idea that I might not always sleep alone. And I am not talking about the two night stalker cats that insist on treating my bed as if moles and gophers occupy the subterranean layers. I can now sleep through even their most aggressive pouncing and bulldozing. I am talking about someone who replaces the back wall of my pillow fortress, whose presence demands removing layers of blankets – and possibly clothes. Someone who might keep my Popsicle toes warm enough to forgo socks. I might even invest in new pillows to assure pillow equity. All this consideration is lovely daydreaming to have as I lie down and relaw into my well constructed pillow and blanket fortress and fall to sleep….alone.