STILL HERE

The heating went in November and I didn't call anyone. Not out of pride. The call cost money I had already spent twice in my head.

So I wore a coat indoors. I got good at it. I learned which corner of the room held warmth longest, which was under the window, which makes no sense but was true. I learned to boil the kettle twice - once for the flask, once for the bottle at the foot of the bed. There is a whole skill set nobody puts on a CV.

I stopped answering the phone in December. Not everyone. Just the ones who would ask how I was and mean it, because meaning it required an answer and I didn't have one that fit in a phone call. My sister left voice notes. I listened to all of them. I replied to none. She kept leaving them anyway, which I think about more now than I did then.

The worst part was never the cold. It was how ordinary it got. You expect a hard year to feel like a crisis - sirens, a clear line between before and after. It doesn't. It feels like Tuesday. Then another Tuesday. You get up, you do the thing, you eat standing up over the sink, you go back to bed at nine because bed is the warmest place you own. Nothing happens. That's the whole texture of it. Nothing keeps happening.

I don't have a moment where it turned. People want the moment. There wasn't one. There was a Thursday in March when I noticed I'd left the coat on the hook all day and hadn't reached for it, and that was it, that was the entire ceremony.

I'm not going to tell you it made me stronger. I don't think it did. I think it took something and didn't give anything back and I've made peace with the arithmetic.

But I made it to March. I made it to the Thursday.

And I'm still here.