By Julia Rappaport From Mashable

Pivotal Purchase is an ongoing series highlighting a watershed shopping moment — the thing you bought that made you feel like you were financially stable, that changed your perspective, that made you realize you were really, truly, finally an adult.

When I landed my first job out of college, my mom bought me an extremely practical housewarming gift for my first “grown-up” apartment: a high-quality, queen-size mattress. I’m sure she did so because she knew I couldn’t afford to buy one on my own, but, to me, the bed was a signal: that I’d outgrown my twin-bed years, moved beyond that dreaded collegiate extra-long, and was now an adult. Or at least a rudderless 22-year-old pretending with all her might to be one.

“We worried together in the early morning hours that we’d be doomed to a life of separate bedrooms.”

In the 13 years that followed, that mattress traveled with me to six apartments, including the one on an island off of Cape Cod where I held my first newspaper reporting job, the one I rented when I left that island two years later for a gig in Boston at a “big-city” daily paper, and the first apartment I lived in alone—one that I came to love with a fierce tenacity over the next nine years, both for the space it allotted me to come into my own, and for its features, like the vine-covered window in the bathroom and the bookshelves built into small, odd nooks and crannies. 

When my partner, Jack, and I moved into our first apartment together last year, I said goodbye to that place. The mattress, however, came with us. Jack is tall (basically all legs) and lanky, something I adore about him by day, but which, I came to realize as soon as we were spending every night together, makes it tough to share a queen-size bed. He’s a restless sleeper, waking me, his light-sleeping partner, with each toss and turn. And then there’s me: the life-long insomniac who, at age four, walked into her parents’ bedroom to proclaim she’d forgotten how to fall asleep. 

As the months of cohabitation wore on, we each grew increasingly desperate for a good night’s rest—and on more than one occasion, worried together in the early morning hours that we’d be doomed to a life of separate bedrooms.

But then one morning, Jack woke up and announced that he’d figured out the culprit of our nighttime woes: the mattress. 

“It can’t be!” I said, as we lay next to each other, groggy after another restless night. To make his point, he moved his body ever so slightly and I felt as if for the first time just how bouncy the springs really were, how his one small movement had created a cascade of waves. 

I sighed. 

“It is,” I said, knowing what this meant: that the days with my trusty mattress were numbered. This bed had seen me through the first 13 years of my adult life. It was a vestige of my past, and especially my single life, a time when an “I,” rather than a “we,” took priority. It connected me to my parents and to the start of my career. But, as Jack had so concretely demonstrated, it was time to toss this relic to the curb—for both of our sakes.

The first solution seemed obvious: We needed a new, and bigger, mattress. The second took some googling, something along the lines of “what to do when your partner won’t stop tossing and turning and you are a chronic insomniac.” Amazingly, there were answers for that: We needed a foam mattress for motion isolation, and we had to purchase a bed frame with slats to support it. 

A few weeks after Jack first identified the problem, we plonked down the biggest shared lump sum of money we’d spent as a couple (excluding rent) on a new, king-size Loom & Leaf mattress—firm, for added support in our quest for a bounce-free bed, and rated highly for motion isolation. 

In the days leading up to the purchase, I’d schemed about ways we could keep the old one—“It would be perfect for a future guest room!”—even emailing our landlord to see what our storage options might be. But when we got to the part in the order form that asked if we wanted free mattress removal as part of the deal, I gave Jack a nod: Yes, I thought, I’m ready. 

I worried that I’d feel sad after we bought the bed, or nervous about how much we’d spent. But when we clicked “purchase,” all I felt was a sense of calm, steady excitement—about stepping once more, confidently, toward our shared future together, about building a life (and a bed) with a partner who takes my needs and my health seriously, and, quite frankly, about the prospect of finally getting a good night’s sleep. 

Julia Rappaport is a Boston-based writer, editor, and lifelong insomniac who swears by chamomile tea and weighted blankets.

For more on this story go to; https://mashable.com/shopping/pivotal-purchase-the-mattress-of-their-dreams/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29