I remember a brief period at the age of five or six, during the height of the winter months, when the central heating at the house I lived in ceased working. For a while, I would lie chattering, numb, and desperate for help all the night long, missing the days I used to sleep in bed with "mom." When the temperature got to a certain degree, a small, portable radiator was purchased for my bedside; though it did not warm the room, being next to it made the night feel bearable. Even so, it was painfully cold on all sides not directly facing the radiator, such that, no matter how badly I was sweating, I still felt frozen.

For a child, even a single month can feel like a lifetime. In my mind, it did feel like many years that I laid myself beside the radiator, struggling to maintain an appreciable distance from warmth. No matter the distance, whether nearer or further, there always some sense of pain. I was struggling to stay warm, yet contradictorily burning myself and being smothered by it, and no solution felt practicable to alleviate the discomfort other than accepting a baseline level of pain.