Couch-surfing.
Framing. part 1 of 2.
When I was young, we had a pair of monstrous beige pleather love seats, each side a recliner. They were worn and cracking slightly, like smile lines, in the way that well-loved things age. The dogs had their favorite spot, coincidentally my father’s usual place, and it was worn best of all. I’d sidle up to my dad in the evening, each of us with a comically large bowl of ice cream propped on our laps. When whatever we were watching neared it’s end, I’d look up to see his familiar visage: asleep, mouth agape. I’d snuggle in closer. Home.
In high school, circumstances pulled me temporarily away from those comfortable routines. Weeknight evenings were more often than not spent in my room, at my desk. Weekends, out with friends. My parents had full rein of the remote, chatting, heads close together, in low voices as the TV droned on.
In college, the couch was significantly more worn, but all the more welcoming. I made myself comfortable back home over breaks, relishing in the familiar reassurance of the couch and my family as it always had been. My college boyfriend, Mike, later my husband, found his way there too. His presence next to mine, my parents snuggled up together, the dogs divvied up between us all, comprised one of those tiny but utterly intoxicating moments that make up a good life.
After we married, we lived in a miniscule studio apartment in Manhattan. We measured our space carefully, and I cut out little paper rectangles to scale representing different furniture pieces. Then, we went couch shopping. We’d sink into each offering in the showroom, assessing our main criterion: our ability to watch a movie, thoroughly entangled. We settled on a small grey velvet sofa, with elegant, modern, squared off lines. When it was delivered, brand new and gleaming, I spent what felt like hours stroking the soft fabric. It was the place we gathered, nightly, to put a cap on the day. We lay, gazing out the window at the city lights and talked about mostly little things. We passed the time watching this or that, simply in each other’s company. Home.
After our daughter arrived, we had to squish a bit tighter to fit on the couch, but it was the centerpiece of our studio and the centerpiece of our home. It was the place I sat, nursing L, while Mike idly stroked my calves; where we debated the plans for the day, where we folded laundry and discussed household tasks. The pillows on the back began to lose their square rigidity and acquire the lived-in swooped back of use. Home.
Circumstances again pulled me away from leisurely evenings on the couch, I was in medical school and tethered to my desk most weeknights. Spontaneous evening chats became less frequent. We spent less time entangled while catching up on our favorite shows. It was harder to fit, after all. A few years later, we moved. We had more space but the same lovely couch, though we spent less and less time there together (slightly more on that story ). The couch was still beautiful, but looked out of place and small in the larger living room, it’s gleaming grey just a little off juxtaposed with the off-white carpeting. The grooved spot where we had fit so precisely slowly faded. The pillow droop remained, fixed. We diverged in our ways to pass the evening. There wasn’t much worth watching on TV anymore. The couch was still my preferred evening spot to read. Mike passed his time in the home office on the computer.
The days before I moved out were shattering. Mike and I had decided to get divorced and we were bird-nesting. L stayed in the house and we alternated which one of us stayed with her. I couch-surfed the nights I was out of the nest. My first night away was a hot one. I had anticipated feeling alone and empty — sad. But as I lay there in my close friend’s spare room, sweat beading on my forehead and listening to the sounds of the city; I felt cradled and cared for. I missed my daughter. But I was safe, emotionally safe, in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was ensconced with people who cared for me and released from the binds of being home. An air mattress had never felt more welcoming.
I intended to find my own (temporary? more than temporary?) apartment. I had just completed my graduate program and though I had started working in a friend’s lab, I didn’t yet have a paycheck. It was an uncertain time. I was striking out on my own, and I wasn’t sure what direction I was headed. What could I afford? What did I need? I felt as if I was stepping off a ledge, mired in fog, not sure how far I would fall before reaching an unfamiliar bottom. In taking that terrifying step, I was surprised to find a net in place of the anticipated crevasse.
For a while, I stayed with my friends, Paul and Madeline — who had just had a new baby. Mornings began in their spare room and found me a bit later on the living room couch, an infant sleeping on my chest, light streaming through the windows. Their couch looked a lot like that of my childhood, plush beige pleather, wonderfully over-stuffed and well-worn. Evenings were passed pleasantly chatting in the kitchen, lingering over dinner at the table discussing the day, then mugs of ice cream and an episode of something fun on TV into the night. Wrapped in the simple, effortless coziness of those evenings, I was awakened to the size of the hole in my heart. Home was the cushioned, cocooned, feeling of the couch on an odd Tuesday evening. When was the last time I had felt that? Oh, how lonely I had been!
My prior solitary evenings on the couch had been pleasant enough. I marooned myself on our small sofa adrift in the sea of our large and mostly empty living room, curled up and tiny along one arm, legs tucked beneath me. I lost myself in novels, mostly about the apocalypse. It was a phase — one that kept me distracted, for a time, from the disintegration of things around me, in my real world. I was fascinated by the myriad of ways the characters rebuilt their societies after the collapse.
L’s absence was a constant ache when I was away. But when I returned to the nest, to her, restored and refilled as I was by the welcome I had felt the previous week — I found I was a better parent than I had been. More present. More patient. Happier. On my first night back with L, it was a relief to be alone. We agreed to FaceTime with L around dinnertime each night with the parent out of the nest. It was during those conversations, feeling acutely the sudden return of the tightness in my chest and shoulders, that I appreciated most the contrast. Those phone calls were the hardest part of adjusting to the separation. Once completed, however, I felt myself unwinding again. It took a bit longer to gradually shed my learned behaviors and let my guard down. I was still stepping carefully, though there were no longer eggshells strewn about the floors. I tried my utmost not to let that seep over to L. In those evenings, a glowing feeling of home warmed and enveloped L and me in an invisible bond, intensified for me by the absence of that dark marital shadow in the back of my mind.
Over the course of a month of this arrangement, as enjoyable as it was to spend those evenings on the couch with my friends, I saw that it was hard to keep the extra room set up: the air mattress propped against the wall, my suitcase in the corner.
I migrated to stay with my PhD advisor, Alan, and his family, who had a spare bedroom. I barely had time to feel shy and uncertain. Kate — my advisor’s wife, pulled me quickly into the fold of the household. I felt like a grown child, long-away, home now to get through a rough patch. With my mother a too-far distance away, the feeling of being back home again was a well-needed salve on my aching heart. Kate and Alan’s couch was large, with a sleek squared back, soft off-white fabric, a deep seat, big comfortable pillows, and a generous throw blanket. Their two cats were often cozied up there, their rounded backs mirrored in the gentle, soft curves of the pillows, giving the feeling of an opulent den. Not a few nights found Kate and I there, up late with the kitties, getting pleasantly wine buzzed, eating popcorn and watching Disney movies. It was heavenly.
One night, live coverage of some world news event playing in the background, discussing life with my mentor, our conversation turned to the future. Alan made a vague reference to me in a few years, with a new partner. I felt the sensation of being on a precipice as I paused before speaking. Almost unbidden, my dark, ugly and private fears tumbled out into the space between us. I had squandered my chance at life-long love. I was not worthy of it. I had given up. In the paraphrased words of Mike at our last therapy session: I was more of a burden than someone would choose to bear.
I was (heart in my throat) “ok” with that. I had made my choices.
My father passed away many years ago. In turning those fears over in my head, I had often tried to summon my father’s reassurances, to imagine him beside me, comically large bowl of ice cream on his lap. I tried to hear again his belief in me and love for me. Too often these efforts came up thin, supplanted as they were on my own beaten-down self-esteem.
Alan picked up my fears with steady, open and accepting hands.
No.
He spoke as he always had to me about science, as someone secure in his understanding of the world — with utter confidence and conviction — No. He knew for certain I was worthy of love. I didn’t believe it in that moment. Though in the days that have followed, when I believe it the least, when I attempt to banish those deep-seated fears, my father’s conjured voice is stronger, knitted together with Alan’s confident and certain agreement.
That cushioned feeling of home, of safety, grew stronger and stronger. At the end of my marriage I had felt utterly alone and unloved. Rejected. Like I wasn’t enough. Worthless. The decision to separate had given me an unexpected and amazing gift: opening my eyes to the love that already surrounded me. Even in the most lonely moments of my marriage, I knew abstractly that people cared for me — but once I started looking for it, seeing the manifestation all around me was astounding.
I again found myself incorporated into the rhythms of my adopted household, sharing dinner with Kate and staying up late to communally watch TV and chat late into the evenings. I looked forward to seeing my surrogate family each evening. I missed them when I was away. I was thrilled and content to be home with L when it was my turn in the nest, but once she was safely tucked into bed, alone on the small grey velvet cushions, my gaze would drift to the empty seats beside me and my thoughts to my adult companions. Those nights were some of the most healing nights of my life, like putting on a favorite sweatshirt after being cold for longer than you care to remember.
More than just routine evenings, there were extraordinary acts of kindness. One particularly bad night, Mike discovered a statement from a surreptitiously consulted lawyer. Furious with my duplicity, my usual request to FaceTime with L was denied. Being away from home meant I was powerless to fight this injustice. As I made my way back to my borrowed bed though a maze of public transit, I was suddenly overwhelmed by it all: the vehement hate emanating from my text exchanges, the harsh reality that I was still without a paycheck or a plan, the burden I was on my generous advisor and his family, being away from my daughter. I felt anchorless, powerless. A tote containing my clothes for the next few days felt both too light and insufferably heavy on my shoulder. In this dark moment, I felt the world around me retreat and blur at the edges as tears stung my eyes. This was my reality. I wished I could curl up in a ball alone, but there I stood on the subway, surrounded by rush-hour strangers, each on their own journey. I couldn’t contain it and as I stood there, silent tears overflowed and streamed down my face. A woman offered me a tissue and words of assurance. I must have looked a mess. I made my way almost blindly, following muscle memory, my mind in a dozen different places, each miles away. I walked the quiet streets back to Alan and Kate’s taking deep shuddering breaths to calm my nerves. I stood for a moment outside their house. The windows shone in the dark: sanctuary. As I climbed the porch stairs toward the warmth, I hoped I looked a little better than I had on the subway a short time ago. I walked in and offered up a smile, said “hello!” to everyone. Immediately they knew something was wrong. I was struck then, with guilt and gratitude both. I explained what had happened with as much positivity as I could muster, as much matter-of-fact, “I’ll be ok!” as I could convey. It couldn’t have been very convincing. Alan and Kate were beside themselves with emotion on my behalf. Arms were wrapped around me. Kate drew me a bath. For the second time that evening, I was overwhelmed. And as I sank into the warm water I cried once again, now at my unboundless fortune.
I wasn’t alone.
When I moved to my new place, he kept the sofa. My living room now features a beautiful craftsman style couch: warm cherrywood wrapped around batik cushions with a beautiful array of coppers, russets and soft blue-greys. I hold it in trust for the college-aged daughter of some dear friends who were moving, until she is ready to have it for her own. The couch was their first purchase as a couple, the fabric, now almost threadbare, a lucky find on a trip together, an extravagant purchase for the young pair. I call it, aptly, “the love couch”.
I am not the first person to write about the importance of gratitude for happiness. I am not the first person to write that looking for the silver lining will catch you finding them everywhere. I can only tell you that deciding I needed to get divorced was life shattering for me. I felt ashamed and alone. Like a failure. Like I wasn’t worthy of love. Separating was one of the scariest, most awful things I thought I would ever do. Yet finding those silver linings transformed that devastating decision into a profoundly life-affirming one.
I like adventure, but I don’t like living on the edge. I like things to be figured out, planned for, anticipated. When things get tough I often feel like I am teetering on a precipice — as though any small move in either direction will make or break me. But that is just a feeling. A feeling that can be kept at bay, to some degree, with a change in perspective.
So when you’re on a precipice and you may need rescue, when you need a cocoon at the end of the day, when you need to find that sense of home that’s slipped away — don’t let the love around you be invisible.
In the proffered tissue from a stranger, in the simple evening with a friend, in the brief moments when you are seen —
Find the silver linings.
And make a net.