A Brief Affair with Cold
winter realizations upon entering my 20s
There is a difference between feeling the cold and feeling cold. For 19 years, I had only ever felt the cold—but last week, for the first time, I felt cold. A lingering, heavy coldness that permeated every living cell in my body, quietly settling into the spaces I didn’t know existed.
Most of my childhood was spent in places that cycled through four seasons—from heat waves to rain storms to white winters, I lived it all. Growing up in Scandinavia meant I had to wear a full snow suit to school once the first snowfall hit because the walk from our apartment to our car was deathly icy. On top of that, my mother would bundle me up in a hat and scarf and mittens so that only my face would be exposed to the winter climate, leaving me with a permanent red nose and chapped lips for three whole months of the season. I didn’t mind it, nor did I barely notice it. The school would keep us inside during recess on days when it hit below 10 degrees (it was deathly icy) which I never understood why because I truly did not feel cold at all. In fact, if I were given a choice I would have rather been burying my bare hands in the fresh snow than be locked up in the classroom, even if that meant I would suffer from stinging frostbites.
I learned to ski at a very young age because skiing runs in the blood of Swedes, and I could spend whole days on the slopes, not once wanting to leave out of my own will. Last week, though, I went on a ski trip for the first time in three years. Nostalgic and all, as always, I admired the gradual increase in snow on the roof of little townhouses through the train window, a familiar sight. I expected nothing to have changed; same snow, same slopes.
But something felt different. The wind carrying the snowflakes felt like shards of glass slapping my face. The needling numbness in my fingertips seeped inwards around my knuckles. I had never felt this before. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t bothered by the melted snow—remnants of my brother’s snowball attack—sliding down my back. I was cold. Really cold. Three hours in and I was eager to head back to curl up on the couch with a thick blanket and finish reading the last chapters of my book.
Never once in my life had I been so acutely aware of the cold, and somewhere in the discomfort, I realized that maybe this is what adulting meant. Feeling things I’d never noticed before, but wishing I hadn’t. For the first time, I didn’t just feel the cold—I felt cold. And I hated it, but in some strange way, I loved that I could feel it all.
