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what kind of bloggery is this: day three

I placed my desk is in front of the window. This seemed like a good place to put a desk during the long summer days when I first set about making this closet my office. I had a view of my neighbor's garden, their apple tree, their lilacs. But as autumn supplants summer, autumn afternoons bleed into early evening pretty fucking early and the world becomes dark all around. The window becomes less a window and more a mirror. The effect is decidedly less pastoral. I'm sitting here facing my reflection which seems idiotically symbolic. My eyes and nose are obstructed by the plastic window casement, so all I can see is the top of my head in the top window pane, the locking mechanism on the window the window casement, my double chin, my grey sweater-ed sloppy sloping shoulders, my grey sweatered sausagey arms, my grey sweatered matronly bosom, and then, thank god, the top of the desk under which the rest of my overstuffed pillow-y form is hidden.

I'm planning on moving my office downstairs into a bigger room, partly so I won't have to put my desk in front of a window/mirror and gaze at the horror that is my current lumpy self  but mostly because I want more space. I want a quiet room apart from others with doors that close. I want my own room.

I'm going to hand over my current space and the adjoining bedroom to my spouse. He's a generous fellow who likes to surround himself with things and who is a big enough soul he doesn't fear getting lost among a collection of paper, art supplies, games, books, toys, keepsakes, and other personal treasures.

I wish I could be more like he is, but I'm not and I can't be. That's the way it is. After years of feeling evil for needing order, I realize I have to reject any judgement placed on my intolerance for disorder and clutter. I'm not a bad person or even a republican for wanting things neatly contained (the political thing there, that was an attempt at humor) ... It's more like I have an allergy to chaos; instead of breaking out in hives, I just break down, get depressed, feel bad. Does this make any sense? It doesn't matter, I suppose.

So, I'll have my own room, and as a bonus, my spouse will finally have a space to do his work. It's what we call after almost 18 years of wedded bliss, a compromise, or an "unconventional solution to quiet a demanding spouse" or perhaps a truce or maybe we can just say, we've come to an understanding.

It's funny that when I was young, I was eager to knit my life with another person completely. Now that I'm decidedly un-young and pretty well knit and knotted to another, all I want to be is myself by myself. Not forever and not all the time, but often enough that I need to claim my own space. It's not so much that I'm rejecting my husband and my kids, but maybe for the first time ever I'm making room for myself.

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