hello reader! this is a travel entry. i'm far from home right now, staying in a hotel. unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar pillows, unfamiliar ceiling. my parents always used to tell me i had a lot of trouble sleeping in new beds, and when we would stay in other people's houses i would have nightmares and wake up, usually crying and screaming.
as an adult, i still feel this weird anxiety pretty strongly. it's funny because you'd think i still feel tied to my bed at my parents' house, but i slept in that one recently and it just felt. awkward. it was too high, and too small. i felt like i was in a cage. i don't feel particularly bound to my current bed at my place either. it's too low? i sound like goldilocks. but it's strange.
i feel the most connection to my last bed at my grandparents' house in my second room there, where i was for about 18 months. it's not that long of a time but it was like this giant double bed with loads of feather pillows so i always felt very safe, and contained. i had a lot of problems falling off the bed as a child (don't laugh) so it kept me contained. i did a lot growing in that bed, and a lot of pain and joy happened in the desk right next to it. it's weird to think how significant such a small space that already contained my aunt's life as a teenager (it used to be her room) has so much of mine in it too.
but those same old feelings of anxiety wash over me when i'm in a new bed, and this is the first time in a little i've been in one without someone else to keep me grounded. to be fair, that doesn't always help. i stayed in a hotel with my girlfriend at the time when i was visiting a year or so ago and we'd been on a day out, and i'd had a pretty crappy day honestly (this was around a week pre-hrt so i was feeling very self-conscious) and i woke up in the middle of the night *convinced* there was someone under the bed and i jumped up into the chair beside the bed rocking back and forth in a ball for almost an hour before i was convinced to go back to sleep.
this weird dread takes hold of me in hotels especially, like something is going to happen. it all feels far too grey. maybe this is a trauma thing, who knows. i used to have pretty bad separation anxiety which i somehow kept a secret from my parents, the worst incident of which being when my dad came with me and my brothers to visit my cousins' house for a few days, but he had to go back home for work partway through. i ended up having multiple quiet sobbing meltdowns thinking about stuff like the last thing he touched in my bag and somehow, nobody found out. i was pretty good at that as a child.
here i am again, feeling like i'm fending off another sobbing session late at night still half-drunk after a night out in a hotel after doing something pretty dumb and triggering earlier when i arrived (yes, the she did it again award goes to me) and i can't help but feel restrained by my own feelings just as i have been my whole life. this unfamiliar ceiling should feel like independence and freedom, right? that i'm at a point where i can finally do all this stuff alone should feel so good, right? but i just feel deflated and attacked by myself. it's pretty fucked that i have the mental illness where people have been so bad to me i split into pieces to manage it. and i love all of them. but god, some of you are so, so annoying.
thank you for listening to my late night ramblings, reader. i hope you sleep better than i do tonight.