Before I left the house but after my wife and I decided to separate, there was a period of time where I used the spare bedroom as my bedroom. There really wasn’t any other choice. For the financial outlay of a staying at a hotel for the length of time it would take for me to find a new place, I could have bought a small car and lived in that. I also couldn’t get an apartment for a month and a half. Plus, really? Moving TWICE? Moving once was going to be bad enough. Staying in our house until I found my new house was the only viable option regardless of how uncomfortable it was (although, upon reflection, I would suggest against staying in the same house. Do whatever you can...including the purchase of small automobiles).
First of all, let’s take a look at the name: SPARE bedroom. I was pretty much feeling like a spare in my marriage so why not use my namesake bedroom? When I was asking my wife to try to work things out, her attitude was “Spare me…” As I sat in the other room while my wife and daughters watched TV together mainly because I couldn’t stand the tension of being in the same room with my wife, I felt like a spare tire…just there in case they needed me. Certainly, the room fit my mood at the time.
The act of going to bed was interesting when you were banished to the spare room but your kids didn’t know about the divorce yet. I had to wait until the girls were asleep before I went to bed just so they wouldn’t find out. Truth is, when I was travelling a lot for my job, the girls would end up sleeping with their mom anyway, so I’m not sure they would have connected any dots.
Speaking of when I was traveling, the girls got so used to sleeping with their mom, they would come into our bed even when I was home. We had a king size bed, but I had a hard time sleeping with three other people. If they were unrelated super models, maybe not so much, but they weren’t. They were a) my wife who was probably glad to have the girls between us considering the outcome of our marriage and b) my girls who could be in the Cirque du Soleil with some of the sleeping positions they got in…and every single one of them involved poking me in the back. (Again, though, if they were super models and not my daughters, Cirque du Soleil positions wouldn’t be so bad. It’s amazing how every bad story can turn good with the addition of super models. Get some today!)
So, it was off to the spare bedroom for the spare member of the household. Allow me to paint a picture of the spare bedroom although I probably don’t have to since a lot of households have them. To start off, you have the bed and it’s never the most comfortable bed in the house. Let’s face it; the couch is a better option than the spare room bed. The bed was usually owned by one of the spouses prior to marriage that was too good to give up but not good enough to play in the big league bedroom (i.e. the master bedroom). Let the relatives sleep on it when they come over. Serves them right for not paying for a hotel (just kidding! Love my relatives! Don’t forget my birthday! I need a flour sifter).
Next up is the pathetic single dresser stuck in the corner that is full of somebody else’s clothes…and I don’t mean somebody else in the household, somebody ELSE completely. Hand me downs for my daughters from the neighbors, clothes bought and brought over by grandparents that were still too big for the girls, various blankets, sheets and baby clothes that we were keeping for…um…what reason? There wasn’t any room for my stuff not that I really went that far anyway. I was still able to use my own closet and drawers in the master bedroom, thank you very much. I just couldn’t use my wife’s closet and drawers, if you know what I mean! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Ahem. Too soon? Yeah, I think so.
A lonely little nightstand with an equally lonely little lamp sat next to the bed. In the drawers there was absolutely nothing…except dust which I’m sure we were saving for the girls for when they got older. I used the nightstand mainly to put my phone (aka my alarm clock) on and have it charge overnight. I was at a point where I didn’t want to read…my mind was pretty much tuned to only one channel and couldn’t spare the focus-osity for reading. Instead I used “Words With Friends”, “Draw Something”, and good ol’ Facebook to lull me to sleep.
Yes, I would sneak into the spare bedroom once they were asleep so I could go to sleep myself. A lot of the times I would sit there in the dark, only the luminance of my iPhone shedding any light, breathed in the fresh air flowing in from the open windows where it was nicely circulated by the ceiling fan above me, and think about how much it sucked to be sleeping there.
I’ll bet super models would have made it less sucky.
Next time: Let’s not put a ring on it.
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