First Night

I didn't sleep well the first night in my new apartment. I tossed and turned and woke up throughout the night feeling incredibly out of place. It was intense, and I was worried I was doomed to repeat it for as long as I lived there. I think it had something to do with the fact that, while lying in bed next to my new Certain Someone, I realized that my bedroom was a closet. I don't mean that in a bratty, "OMG, my room is sooo small, it's a freaking closet" way, I mean that in a literal, "my room is a closet that's been converted into a bedroom" way.

It started when I turned to Certain Someone and inquired as to how many people he thought had lived in this apartment since the building was first built, and what their lives were like, how long they had lived there, and whether or not they were happy there. This is just the way my mind works; I want to know the history of every little thing - people and vintage clothes and stray animals - it always fuels my imagination. But for some reason the thought of my apartment, the place I'm planning on calling "home" for as long as I see fit, having this vast history, and now it was my turn to deposit my own story into the space...I was overwhelmed. I pictured everyone who had ever lived there coming over for a party, dead or alive, and me not having anymore claim on the space then they would - aside from the fact that it was my possessions that currently occupied the space.*

I stared up at, not the ceiling, but the shelves that stuck out halfway over the bed. There are two large shelves for storage, and a built-in dresser with a vanity mirror in my tiny bedroom which leads to the bathroom. Attached right under the shelves, I noticed as absentmindedly stared up, was a bar - like, to hang clothes on? And that's when I realized that, holy shit, my "bedroom" had actually been a originally built as a "dressing/changing room", and the apartment was actually a studio. This was backed up when my brain put it together that my actual closet, which I had thought was strangely placed in the living room, had at one time been a Murphy bed, it's extra-large size and lack of a sliding door backing up my theory.

All this conspired to unnerve the hell out of me, and I spent the night restlessly trying to get comfortable and waking up to find that I was sitting up in bed, staring out into the living room which was colored a ghostly green due to the street lights shining through my lime green curtains. Certain Someone would coax me back into bed, and I'd snuggle into his arms, which on any other night soothes me to no-end, but the bumps-in-the-night caused by my upstairs neighbor and my late-night building mates bounding up the stairs that are next to my apartment only served to rattle my already-fragile nerves, and by dawn I had given up on the idea of peaceful sleep.

Check back later this week to see how I'm faring in the apartment now, and for photos of my little place.

*note to self: write a short-story about this.