Warm

The house I grew up in was cold in every sense of the word. My discount quilt was polyester and itchy and somehow provided no warmth. It was a hideous beige, trimmed with a solitary pink stripe and bow. It had been picked out by my mother, who didn't care that I craved comfort or that I hated pink. 

When I'd cry out that I was freezing or needed a different blanket or just more blankets, for fucks sake, I was told, in an annoyed voice, "Just stick your hands between your knees or under your armpits."

We moved to a colder apartment in a two-family house with frigid grandparents years later. The grungy dwelling was like an ice box, and my mother, now in menopause, really didn't care about the inhumane temperature. "You're old enough to put on a second sweatshirt." 

After college, when the economy was trying its best to emulate the great depression, I eventually found work at a condo management company, working for two misogynists. They were such big, tough men with bigger egos that they needed the office kept in the 50°s. I begged them to turn up the temperature so I didn't have to wear a parka and gloves from May-August, but I was told, "Get over yourself." The space heater at my desk barely provided warmth, yet burned grooves in the bottoms of my shoes. I'd spend my lunch hour sitting in my car with the windows up, thawing my fingers and walking barefoot in the parking lot, thawing out my toes. 

My house was built in New England in the 1950s and had no insulation. None. The furnace was house original, an environmental nightmare that couldn't heat 10 Square feet, let alone 900. The electric fireplace did little to heat the rooms or melt the ice. But it did raise the energy bill—a lot. 

I've spent years with blue fingers, numb toes, and apathy tossed in my face. Years with a tingly-cold back and shivering body telling myself I probably should "just get over it." But then, everything changed. Now, it's all different. Things have finally become right-side up. Happy. Everything has become kind. Apathy has been replaced with pure, genuine, magical love. Everything is warm.