Bug Me Not!

There’s this story.

Of a princess caught on the wrong side of town. She’s forced to ask for lodging — the kind not meant for her. The people, wary but bound by some unspoken law of hospitality, let her in. But they ask her to sleep on a stack of mattresses, thinly veiled suspicion hidden somewhere between the seams. A single pea tucked deep inside, almost invisible. Only a real princess would feel it. That’s what the story said.

Growing up, I was flabbergasted by the idea. I used to sleep on the floor, on a makeshift bed cobbled together with old quilts and thin sheets, on the nights I was lucky. The floor was always honest — hard, cold, and indifferent. A pea between a dozen mattresses sounded like the kind of dream you didn’t tell anyone in case it made you seem ungrateful.

Then, one night, everything changed. I slept on a memory foam mattress — a six-inch wonder that didn’t just support my back, it remembered it. That’s how it felt, like someone finally remembered what I liked. It cradled me, forgave me, held me steady. I was ruined after that. No bed ever felt quite right again. I’d think of it even when I wasn’t near it, haunted by the cloud-soft feeling of being known. For a while, it was the closest I’d come to being in love.

But — as with most love stories — there was a villain.

It started as a small rash on my arms. I thought maybe ants, so I dusted the sheets with camphor. But then came the blood. Small, dry drops. Always there in the morning. I started sleeping curled tight, eyes flicking to the corners of the room. By the twelfth day, I was sure I was being haunted — not by memory, but by something real.

Bedbugs.

They’d moved in without asking, and turned the one place I felt safe into something cruel. They made a minimalist out of me. I threw everything. I bought a new mattress — firm, chemical-free, and promised to be sealed against intruders. But like all matters of the heart, it wasn’t so simple.

It’s been months.

I still haven’t taken the plastic cover off.

Maybe I’m waiting.

Or maybe I’m just not ready to be held again.