Time, Therapy, and Finding Scuff Marks Behind Your Furniture

On feeling your feelings

“What do you mean I should ‘just sit with it’?” asked bird. “Shouldn’t I be doing something?”

“You are.” replied fox. “You are.”

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Mobile: Risenshine in gorgeous colors spun by Lunden Simone Interior Design.
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Thoughts while making

I’m sitting on the floor this morning.

Back against the wall.

In the place my couch used to be.

On this same day in 2005, I was sitting on a different floor, back against a different wall, in the place a couch should be.

I’d just moved to Bend from San Diego.

I was alone. In a big house. With no furniture.

I’d agreed to host a family Thanksgiving. And I figured having a place to sit might be nice.

So I bought the couch. And a matching loveseat.

That was 17 years ago.

If couches could talk.

The stories they would tell.

Holding you when nobody else is there to see.
Holding you during the hardest conversations.
Holding you at your highest highs.
Holding you while you hold the hand (or paw) of the one you love.
Holding you while you work, while you rest, while you cry, and play.

Yesterday, as I was cleaning the couch for its new owner, I moved it–revealing a dark scuff mark where the back had met the wall.

A straight line. 35” up the wall. 69” across.

I moved to Bend when I was 35.

I was born in 1969.

A timeline etched across an off-white wall.

A reminder that behind all things, time is always being marked.

When the pieces of your life move, by choice or by circumstance, what do you do?

Today, I’m grateful for the bitter-sweet perspective that a line on the wall offers me, for all the reasons.

The couch + loveseat went to live with a family up on NE Alberta.

They seemed nice.

Without a couch, I will sit on the floor for a while.

And, that’s okay.

If furniture were therapists, which piece of furniture in your house would you most want to have a session with and why?

The scuff :)