bright gold sheets.

This is a personal narrative assignment I had to write for my English class. I didn’t have a very good idea of what I wanted to write when I started and creative writing is not my strong suite but here you go…it turned out…interesting….

Bright Gold Sheets

             I love my gold sheets. They are my favorite part of my dorm room. I love them so much that I actually make my bed now, which is something I never do at home. It’s hard to say why I like my sheets so much. They aren’t necessarily super nice sheets. Some would say their gold color is a little too…well…gold. I’ve never really been into bright colored things. I like the idea of wearing bright colors but I always lean towards neutrals. It’s the same for things in my room, lots of neutrals.

I remember the feeling I had when I started looking to buy things for my dorm room. The whole process was so strange. My mom took me to Target to buy a popcorn bowl and silverware. I bought plastic tubs to keep my stuff in. I looked for a new bedspread. I owned my own steamer and cleaning supplies. A week before I moved to Springfield, I had all my new stuff in the middle of my bedroom floor and I just started at it for a few minutes. I had never used any of it before and I had no idea where I was going to put it all. I couldn’t accept that all of this new stuff was mine. I owned lame, adult house stuff.

My sheets, however, were different. I had looked everywhere for these gold sheets. Before I even knew what my bedspread was going to look like, I knew I wanted gold sheets. My mom thought I was crazy. I had never picked out something like that for my room. Bright gold. What made me want these sheets so badly was a conversation I had with one of my friends about colors we would want in our houses if we could decorate them ourselves. He said one of his favorite colors for a bedroom was gold, especially when it came to bedding.

I did not buy gold sheets to take his idea. I didn’t want to be like him or anything. But, buying them in gold made me feel like these sheets had meaning, in a strange way. In my mind, these gold sheets kept me connected to him. They kept me connected to home. Unlike the shoe rack and towels and laundry detergent I owned, I felt like these sheet were mine. There was something of me in them. They made my dorm feel more like home.

The first few nights I stayed in my dorm room, I would turn down my covers and just look at my sheets for a few seconds. They were one of the only familiar things I saw the first weeks of school. When I laid down to go to sleep, I thought about home. I wondered what my friend was thinking. I thought about what I had done that day and all of the people I had met. It was all so much to take in, but my sheets were always there; my bright gold sheets I bought because I wanted to remember what home felt like.

My first year of college was a struggle to say the least. I have done a lot of growing, a lot of learning and a lot of moving forward. There were a few times I just wanted to pack up all of my stuff and drive home where I felt safe and comfortable. I never did, and as strange as it sounds, my sheets became my “home away from home”. I knew that when I laid in my bed, I was somewhere familiar; I had part of home with me.