I get the affection for the single life: time and space for your own time and space… your own habits, your own choices. You don’t have to compromise with anybody, double-check plans, or keep yourself from watching a Netflix show because your partner isn’t home yet (ugh, so glad we’re over this now. Kind of).
But my appreciation keeps growing for this marriage thing. This time, it’s thanks to the black Ikea bookshelf. It’s been taken down and set back up eight times in Cody’s life, but four of those times, the shelves have held my books, too. In the home we just moved out of, the bookshelf was in the living room, telling people how much we loved reading and, also, the wall was the perfect size for this literary behemoth. The two bedroom apartment housed our master bedroom and Cody’s office/guest room. In our new home, we could have kept the bookshelf in the living room.
But this time…
This time, the bookshelf has been set up in my own little office. That’s right. We have three bedrooms now, and one of them is my own little room.
Can I just say much how I have missed that and not really realized that I did?
I LOVE having my piano, a desk (where I wrote the majority of my first manuscript btw. My mom asked me today why I didn’t just throw it away because it’s so old and I’m still too unpublished to tell her that, one day, this desk will be in a museum), and A FREAKING BOOKSHELF in MY OWN ROOM.
Cody walked in on me working earlier this afternoon with a knowing smile. He does that sometimes. When I asked him about it, he shrugged and said, “I just wanted to watch you in your little creative space. I knew you’d be in a happy place and I wanted to see it.
…But if you weren’t in a happy space, I would have just shut the door.”
Sometimes I wonder if he jumped out the pages of one of those shelved books.
In hindsight, of course I would love a room like this. I love me time to recharge and just be. And a place to create music? A space to write? A place to read? Why wasn’t this a thing earlier in my marriage?!
To which a small voice reminds me, “You needed time to qualify for a mortgage, remember?”
Anyway. Being able to capture what’s good about the single life in this little room for myself feels like a double-win. I can have my own space AND share the larger home that I absolutely adore sharing with my husband.
And the black bookshelf? It’s so much easier putting back together with someone else by your side.
