Every night as I lay in my bed, actually as I walk through my bedroom door, I smile. I smile and wonder how could "I" ever be so lucky as to get to sleep in a beautiful room like this. I feel my heart rate slow, and my peace increase. This is the tranquility that I have desired for so many years and yet have not had, truth be told did not feel that I deserved.
I have always been of the foolish mentality that everyone and everything should always come ahead of me. It is a ridiculous idea that many of us moms / women subscribe to. It has always just seemed so selfish to put myself above anyone else (or even miles close to). I should always be last on the list, and then resent it, or so I thought for all too many years. I no longer subscribe to that foolish idea, well not as much.
In the 12 years that we have owned this home, Christopher and my bedroom has been ever evolving. When we bought this house and had only two children, the house had three bedrooms upstairs. They were in bad shape, for that matter the whole house needed a lot of love. There were two smaller bedrooms and one HUGE long room with an almost walk-in closet. I had dreams of this room being so beautiful, eventually having a small living area, I could see it in my mind. Our priorities were to fix up the two smaller rooms for Gabe and Grace. We created a Harry Potter themed room for Gabe and a beautiful fairy room for baby Grace. Our room would wait, because there were so many things that needed our attention in this poor run down house. Then there was the bomb shell announcement that I was pregnant with twins. Our huge bedroom soon had a wall up the middle, one side for us one side for the two new tiny babies. We decorated the new nursery, and still our room waited.
We lost Gabe when the twins were 5 months old, and our hearts plunged into despair. The very last thing on our minds was how our bedroom looked. We had one less child, and a huge hole where our hearts once were. We existed, we did the best that we could. Riley and Rowan got bigger, too big for that tiny room, and so we moved again, this time downstairs to what had once been a storage space, then a room for our foster child, then a den. Riley took the half of the big room that had then become two rooms. Riley had a beautiful princess room and Rowan got a fun Spiderman room. We got the t.v. room. When Riley and Rowan were 3 we found out that I was pregnant with our miracle, Elly. Elly bunked with Christopher and I in our tiny, tiny room (that was still decorated for a t.v. room). Eventually our room became to small for the three of us. We did the unthinkable and boxed up all of Gabes things. His room had been sitting the way he left it. It was agonizing, but our living child needed that space. It took us forever to clean out Gabes room. In the end Christopher was the hero and did what I could not fully bring myself to do. We cleaned out Gabes room and painted it hot pink and lime green. It was now a "big girl room". Gracie moved across the hall to her big brother's room and Elly moved up to Grace's room.
In the time that we have lived in this house we have decorated Gabe's room once, Grace's room twice, Rowan's room twice, and Riley's room twice, but never anything for us. I dreamed of a beautiful room where we could relax, and unwind. Everything always came before us, before me. Finally this year I put my foot down, oh I was going to have my nice bedroom, a bedroom that was decorate for no one but Christopher and I. I would have my tranquility!
Part two tomorrow
A beautiful and tranquil retreat. Well done.
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