Writing day 2

an excerpt from yesterday's offering:

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Commitment Phobia

After the men delivered and assembled my bed in my first Harlem apartment, I sat on the bare mattress and cried.

Earlier that day I deflated the air mattress that I slept on for fifteen months: almost five hundred days sleeping six inches above hardwood floors. I had deflated and packed away this air matter my mother gave me when I left South Carolina for the Mid Atlantic. She asked me what I was going to sleep on. I hadn’t thought that far; most of my other housing situations came with some sort of sleeping situation already figured out. The day she gave me the air mattress, I had already packed my books first into my two-door Honda Civic; whatever room was left then got filled with clothes, my guitar and flute. I had no money to buy a bed as soon as I got there, so the air mattress would have to do for a few weeks or months.

I never owned my own bed despite having moved four times between two Carolinas over the course of two years. Priding myself on the knowledge my father bestowed me to be independent, I set out not to burden or inconvenience anyone. To acquire real furniture would be to have to coordinate and pay for movers. The easiest fix would be to keep my worldly possessions at a minimum. Could it fit in my car should I need to move tomorrow? I awaited the imminent possible displacement like some await the apocalypse, and like the believers, I had to be ready to go.