Starfish Sleep

When you have a partner and share a bed, so much can ruin your sleep. Someone hogs the blankets. Someone hogs the bed. Cold toes, snores, restlessness, all exist in the small world of a queen mattress. Don't even think about when one of you has a cold. I truly understand the new trend of partners having their own bedrooms.

On rare occasions, you get the bed to yourself (or a bed if only one of you is traveling). You get to be a bed hog, blanket hog, pillow hog, all at the same time. Spread out like you're staked in the dessert for horse theft. All the blankets wrapped around you like you're going to be a spider's dinner. Three pillows in use for your head, arms, and knees. You pick the hotel in part to how comfortable the bed feels. I mean, that's the main purpose of a hotel (at least to a faithful married person, besides affairs are dirty and call for seedy motels off a secondary highway).

Holy shit when that partnership ends though. No starfish sleep at that time. Where you once met in the middle for cuddles now feels like an encroachment across a line of barbed wire. It's not your side of the bed. It's simply not. It was your partner's side and you are a trespasser.

It takes a long time for it to be your bed again.