Hanging by Threads

I made my bed and I slept in it.

I insisted on a thread count of 500, at least. And none of that two-ply stuff. I felt I deserved it. I wanted the finer things in life, and I achieved them per every square inch. I slept well. As I slept on, day after day, year after year, and epiphany after epiphany, I self-educated on the important things in life between my nights of respite.

However, I lost thread count over the years.

It happens: the wear-and-tear of living. Nothing lasts. You can only hope to replace the deterioration with something else—perhaps something intangible but invaluable.

It came to be that I willingly shared my bed with another. More wear and tear. But invitation softens the blows. Yet, the thread count continued its attrition. To my shame, she wasn't the only one I had shared my bed with, although she was the one I wanted to keep in it. Alas, the others drove her away. Whether they left on their own or were sent away, they each held a thread as they walked away from me. And she—the one—clutched a handful as she left. The thread count continued to lower.

Each lesson in my life has cost me my threads. Remembering the threads I now miss dearly has become my new self-education.

Each cleansing of the soiling that you allow in your bed continues the threads' disappearing. More like evaporating in a whiff, actually, because they leave an odor when they leave the weave. It can be a malodorous parting gift.

I began my life warm and cozy in luxurious bedding with an extravagant thread count. I lived my life like I had all the threads in the world. And now I recline, toward the end of my life, in the threadbare reality of the mistakes I've made.

My once warm and cozy bed has become cold, stark, and lonely. My thread count days are long over, and I curse those who have woven their own lives comfortably with the threads they've taken from me.

I take inventory on my life by counting the threads I have left. Per square inch. What's left suffices only as a shroud.