A Room of One's Own

Let me preface this by admitting that I have not yet read this seminal text by Virginia Woolf. I was introduced to the concept 30 years ago through the lyrics of an Indigo Girls song and have held the idea in my heart.

A room of one's own.

Growing up as the only girl in a family with two brothers, I had my own room. But it wasn't a room of my own. It was in my father's house, and there were rules about what could be put on the walls (nothing) what color it could be (white) and what furniture it contained. A quick internet search revealed the exact suite that was deemed appropriate for me.

Needless to say, the charm of this set wore off after age 10. It wasn't really my room. It was the room for the person my father envisioned his daughter to be.

I bought my first house with my fiance when I was 22. It was a 1970's ranch with carpet in shades of green, blue, and red. Formal drapes in the living room. A house clearly left behind by an older person or couple when they moved into assisted living. 

To me, it was a blank canvas.

It was my own home to create with my future husband. 

So it wasn't truly my own. Compromises had to be made on the bedding we chose for our wedding registry. I had to accept hand-me-down living room furniture from some of his coworkers who had a very different style than my own.

That was the first of five houses we owned together. Each one chosen for the price point and suitability for our family with minor consideration given to location. Style of the house was not important; everything was driven by practicality for a couple with 3 young children living on a single income.

The last house we co-owned was the only one I felt a connection to. I used to think it was because of the quirks and charms of its age and style. Later, I came to realize that it was the closest to being mine of any house I'd ever lived in. My now ex-husband got a job out of state and never moved into it. I lived there alone with my children for 4 months before we moved to join him. I maintained it as a rental property in our absence. I returned to it, without him, to finish the renovations when our tenants moved out. The design choices were almost entirely my own. The blood, sweat, and tears that went into its renovation were mine. He moved back to the house 11 months after I returned, and I made the decision to separate less than a year later.

I started this blog to chronicle the work I did on this house, and record my thoughts along the way. As I read back over it nearly 8 years later, it has been a journal of my own renovation. I have stripped off layers of other peoples' design choices that did not suit me. I found my solid bones and began rebuilding myself. 

I am building a room of my own.

stickers

 As a child in the 80's, stickers were EVERYTHING. Be they puffy, shiny, scratch & sniff, or just a favorite cartoon character, stickers were something to cherish and perhaps trade, and were often displayed in a sticker album.

The problem with most sticker albums was object permanence: once you removed the paper backing and adhered the sticker to the page, it was there forever. I remember one sticker that was so precious to me that I refused to put it in an album. It was a silver castle, in raised metallic glory, on a turquoise background. I probably still had that sticker somewhere in my desk well past my college years because I was to afraid to stick it on anything.

Today, stickers are still popular decorations for water bottles and laptops, and I have a few stickers displayed on these items. But I have an envelope with dozens of preciou
s stickers waiting for the perfect, permanent place to be displayed. Some of them have been in hiding for more than 8 years. These are lovely reminders of places I've been, and things I enjoy but I'm afraid to I'm afraid to waste them, so I keep them tucked away.

The cover of my laptop broke a few years ago and my thoughtful partner ordered and installed the replacement himself, but in doing so two things happened:

• I lost the three beloved stickers that were on the old cover
• The new screen was slightly cracked due to installation errors, but was still very usable. 

He felt bad about the cracked screen and offered repeatedly to replace it although I insisted it was not necessary. Part of my replacement reticence was due to the potential loss of even more stickers, and even though I didn't plan to have the computer repaired, I STILL didn't put any stickers on the cover for almost two years.

Until today.

Today, I pulled out the slumbering stickers and sorted them by category (schools, places I've visited, brands, Scouts, etc.) and then selected a few that had similar enough color schemes to be aesthetically pleasing to my eye, and put them on the cover. Some of the others I threw away because I don't want them anymore. Some of them I need to toss but I'm not ready to yet. And that's okay. They're stickers. They're not forever. They are meant to be enjoyed, not tucked away. There is no perfect place, or perfect arrangement. There is only now. Stick the stickers and enjoy them.

Coming back to life

Five years have passed since I moved back to North Carolina. 

There is no way to chronicle everything that has occurred since my last post in April 2019.

So I will start where I am. 

Yoga classes end with savasana- literally translated from Sanskrit as "corpse pose." So much of who I thought I was died in the last five years. I initially wanted to say that it was an unhealthy, cancerous part of me that needed to be cut out, but that is not true. 

I was never unhealthy. I was in denial that there was a parasitic vine wrapped around me like Japanese honeysuckle on a tree. Sometimes it appears lovely and fragrant, but all the while it is prevents the absorbtion of nutrients which leads to suffocation and death of the host. I was so tightly wrapped that I forgot what it felt like to be unencumbered. I had carried the weight for so long that I didn't even feel it.

Removal of a parasitic vine and restoring the host to health is difficult. You cut the visible vines off, but it takes time for the tree to feel the sun and ramp up photosynthesis so it can thrive. All the while, the roots of the vine can linger under the surface, reemerging and sending tendrils up the base when you're not paying attention. They, too, can come back to life.

At the end of savasana, you transition to a fetal position- parsva garbhasana. Many of my favorite instructors use this time to remind yogis that the end of each yoga practice is a chance to begin again. It is a figurative coming back to life.

My last blog post had me entering 2019 with the idea of living my best life. I begin 2024 with the continued exploration of what it means to come back to life.