I guess when I think about the pandemic the thing that I’ve missed the most is having people in my bed, and no not like that. I’ve had more friends than lovers in my bed over the years and it’s certainly the presence of friends that I’ve missed the most.
It seems silly to say as people are missing far more important things in their lives because of COVID, but I really do miss sleepovers and the togetherness that they hold. I’ve been lucky enough to have made some amazing friends in this 'unprecedented' year; some of whom I text every day, but I’ve only seen in person a handful of times and some whom, despite going for walks with most days, I’ve never eaten a meal inside with or most importantly had a sleepover with.
For me, a sleepover forms the bedrock of a friendship. Friendships deepen in the liminality between consciousness and sleep as our secrets escape into the darkness. In this space, we begin to peel away our exterior selves, and this vulnerability becomes fertile ground for friendships to grow. But then again maybe I'm just a chronic oversharer.
I can’t remember my first ever sleepover, but I can remember the feeling of excitement when I was little and I’d made a new friend and it was time for the first sleepover. Perhaps extending the invitation was akin to the 'defining the relationship' conversation that couples have. The nervousness coupled with excitement and the knowledge that premature timing could compromise the fragility of the emerging friendship. For me the preparation was meticulous, the extra mattress laid out on the floor, the favourite film rented, the bags of caramel covered popcorn bought and the contact organised between the parents like they were our PAs.
As I got older these small-scale sleepovers morphed into larger affairs as my teenage friends from the countryside would pile into the city that I lived in. Although I know it’s not quite true, when I think about being a teenager, I see weekends full of sleepovers and beds full of girls. My mum always said that the house felt happy when it was full, but I wonder what the beds made of the bombardment.
Maybe these incessant teenage sleepovers are why I love nothing more than debriefing with everyone the morning after a big night. Since I was not, and probably never will be, well behaved enough for a Sunday brunch, these debriefs always occurred in my bed. This ritual remained steadfast throughout university, and each morning after a big night out my five flatmates would clamber into my bed and recount their tales of the night before. Depending on how extreme the antics of the night were; our gossiping, meltdowns and giggles would be accompanied by cups of tea or freshly opened cans of beer to 'ride out the hangover'.
Some of my best memories of those girls and that beautiful but chaotic period of life were the Sunday mornings we spent under the same duvet.
Now I’m at uni again and this year it’s been lonely in all sorts of new ways. Lecture halls were abandoned and much like the rest of the world physical connection was traded for digital connection. But it was the lack of the characteristic late nights followed by languid mornings in bed with the girls that served as perhaps the starkest reminder to me that things were certainly not the same.
While beds can be a space of laughter, storytelling and silliness they can also be a space for immense healing. After one particularly bad heartbreak, being in bed with my friends was something that I relied on to glue myself back together. I used to Uber to my best friend’s house from nights out just to cry in her bed and her arms. I continued crying there for weeks and the number of tears I cried about this boy probably outnumbered all the words he ever said to me. But in the same way that her pillows survived the onslaught of tears so did I. I’d like to say we both came out the other end of it as little stronger, but I really can’t speak to the state of her bedding, only the state of my mind.
Although I’ve since realised (like in most matters of the heart) it was never really about the boy at all, but me and my misdiagnosis of depression as heartbreak. It’s because of this depression that I’m excited for the social renaissance of my bed. I’m excited for a time when it is not only the place that I turn to for refuge when the densest days of depression make it impossible to resurface, but also a place full of giggles and gossip, confessions and revelations and maybe just a shit film and a bottle of cheap wine.
I’m hopeful that my bed will once again be a location frequently visited by many – as any young woman’s bed should be.
