refuge in a small apartment.

It’s stressful beyond description to live with a significant other and I don’t think people talk about it enough. So I’m going to talk about it. And you can take this as a warning and thank me later.

After a few months living with someone you're romantically involved with, you become desperate for any kind of escape, even if you still like them. The necessity to carve out your own personal space pushes its way to the front of your mind. It's time to find a small, removed place to get cozy...on your own.

My partner is a bartender and along with bartending comes free drinks and along with free drinks comes hanging around after work for an hour and drinking free drinks. And along with THAT comes returning home after too many drinks and annoying me. Like really, REALLY annoying me.

Don’t be concerned. It’s not a terrible or abusive type of annoying. But it IS a very annoying, annoying.

So annoying that I feel the need to seek refuge in my own “cozy corner” to keep myself from losing what’s left of my mind.

I’ve had roommates before but there’s something incredibly different about having to share space with a romantic partner. I think it’s because in romantic relationships all of the space belongs to BOTH of you. At least when you have a roommate you have your ROOM to yourself. When you live with a lover it’s next to impossible to escape to a place of your own.

To be free of everything that's annoying you for a moment so you can take a breath, that is true happiness and fulfillment and everything you’ve always desired and expected out of life.

It’s that serious.

My personal “cozy corner” offers all of this to me, and more.

The place I find most cozy is my side of our King size bed in the bedroom, with the door firmly closed.

The lighting is low, coming from the small lamp on my minimalist nightstand and some white twinkle lights hanging over the plush headboard.

I’m right next to the window, facing southwest so I can watch as the sun sets and lights the sky up with color.

My corner provides a front row seat to view the urban wildlife outside, birds most of all. Mourning doves coo and rest on the telephone wires, house sparrows chirrup by, a bluejay screeches as he dives across my field of view, and a cardinal is gone in a flash of red before I can get a good look at him.

The feral cats have an established feline highway and their moves are predictable down to the hour. The shaggy gray one scoots under the fence. The fat orange tabby wobbles across the street. The kittens come out to play but quickly return to hide.

My neighbor has a beautiful giant cane corso he walks in the church parking lot across the street. I admire his steel grey muscled stateliness from my cozy perch high above.

Well, just 3 stories above. It’s not that serious.

A plant named Ursula keeps me company in the window. We got her in April 2020 and she continues to grow more and more lush and robust, bringing a much appreciated jungle feel to my cozy corner.

In the past I scoffed at electric blankets, but now I find them essential. I have one that I carry with me to wherever I am sitting in my house. I don’t know how I’ve ever lived without it. Of course you can find me in my corner with the blanket warmly draped over me. The heat is so soothing that I could sit under it for hours.

I recently acquired another thing I can’t imagine living without - wireless noise cancelling headphones. On the nights my boyfriend comes home and wants to blast music that drives me insane, I can put on these headphones and listen to podcasts and bird sounds.

As I listen, blissfully all alone and undisturbed in my own sonic universe, I work on my latest knitting project. My knitting basket sits right by my bed and everything I need is in it. Knitting is a whole cozy corner in and of itself! Anywhere you’re knitting instantly feels cozy as the yarn falls across your lap and your hands flow into the stitching rhythm.

Perhaps one of the most valuable recent uses for my cozy corner is as a place to participate in socializing over Zoom. Parties and showers and conferences and learning new things, all from the comfort of my cozy corner. It allows me to present a signature visual space. With the backdrop of the twinkle lights behind me I always look cozy to my fellow Zoomers, because I am!

My cozy corner has been a refuge this past year. I’ve been spending a great deal of time at home and that’s not a natural behavior for me. I had to figure out ways to enjoy less active hobbies and pursuits inside the safety of my house. It’s still difficult for me to stay home all the time but think I’ve gotten better, and having a cozy corner had helped immensely.