Brisk chills

Growing up my room was in the back of a four-family apartment in the inner city of St Louis. From my room, you could open a door to the back porch. Winters in St Louis were, and are, miserably cold, frozen pipes would burst and leak water into cascading sheets of ice. My mom, if the bills were paid, kept the thermostat above 80 or, my favorite, was when she'd decide to just turn on the oven. That was our home. I was loved. I also knew that wasn't right, living in consequence of our neighborhood, education, and color of our skin. But I could ignore that as long as she was there, taking care of me. The worst was what I couldn't ignore.

My bed was next to the door that leads to the back porch. I could never really close all the way. In the winter, if there was any crack what so ever, at night when I tried to go, and stay, asleep, snuggled and warm, a brisk St Louisianan chill would send immediate chills all through me. I hated that. I wasn’t just cold. I was hurt. Where was the place I could call home if this was the reality of my living conditions?

For years later, wherever I moved, when winter came, without thought, I immediately cranked up the thermostat to something above 85. I made every reasonable excuse to justify. Firstly, I was paying the bills. And really that's all that mattered. I didn't have to answer to anyone else. I wouldn't have to care about accountability for my behaviors. I was happy, finally, having successfully made a worthy, goal-oriented achievement for me, in my life.

When I married my Caucasian, now ex-wife, anything above 60 was a burning heart wave. And maybe I'm exaggerating. But the point is her temperature regulation, as anyone else's, was a moderation based on her life choices that tended to be reasoned from simple, basic, practicality. In a home with a temperature that high we couldn't reasonably afford to pay bills. And, she was far from considering turning on the oven.

I could regulate body temperature with layers of clothes. But coming home was never like any experience that I ever wanted. Not just cold, I was afraid of living in the ghetto. That's where my mind was. A reasonable, practical choice of maintaining an affordable temperature to me was a denial of my identity. I ignored that. I didn't even know how to communicate that. What reason, if not acknowledged by others, was even necessary to be validated. I was lost and slowly, avoiding knowing the value of my own self-worth, becoming depressed.