{GBF Life + Style} In Bed

I didn't get to spend much time on my fluffy marshmallow bed at The Empire Hotel as sleep was a distant acquaintance during NYFW. When I was in my hotel room and not stampeding through town, I spent most of the time sitting in chairs or couches and didn't flop on the bed until the demands of exhaustion became too loud to ignore.

Yet for the first five years of my life, I lived life on/in a bed. I was born in Shanghai during a time when the socioeconomic climate was still impacted by the remnants of Mao's China. People lived modest lives. Excess was inaccessible. Wealth was a foreign term and even if you had money, there was nothing to buy as the government controlled both supply and demand. You didn't choose where to live, you were assigned a place to live. My very first home was a 8 x 8 box big enough to fit a queen size bed and not much more. There was no kitchen, no bathroom. Just a box.

So, the bed became more than just a place of slumber. It was where I ate, learned to walk, practiced karate, played the keyboard, built legos, did homework, and where I spent weekend mornings being the victim of tickle fights with mom and dad. We turned our box into a home and what it lacked in size we made up with moments of joy and love. Some days, I think back to those years in Shanghai. They were blissfully simple years filled with Sunday morning laughter that flowed through every inch of our 64-square-foot home.

We didn't have much yet we had everything we needed.