February 13, 2024

When I was young, a blizzard hit Akron. That was a cold I had never known before.

The snow towered over me.  It was fluffy. It glistened like no other—it was my vault, my treasure! When rolling it up the slant, I felt as if I was Sisyphus. Unlike Sisyphus, this was the ultimate reward. When my snow boulder met the top of the ice mountain, I made sure to take over the yard with all types of sculptures: snow angels, snowballs and snowmen with their families, all made in an orderly fashion (really just scattered across the yard). My parents would even make me go inside to sabotage the operation, making sure my pocket-sized body didn’t join the army of snowmen. I, of course, resisted. When I finished my grand snow colony, I stared in awe. Eyelashes frozen over, toes numb, raspberry nose held high, I stared over my new nation. Another golden star for General Allen. 

The next day the snow melted. My nation fell. I was defeated.

Beaver Marsh, March 2023. I got out of the car. The busted Mazda 3 from the middle ages could barely warm up. Sam has dragged me on hikes ever since I first met him, secretly revealing a bit of unique joy that I hadn’t felt in years. Don’t think this hike was anything but a nightmare, though. Instantly, the cold shot bullets into my skin. The cold got to every piece of skin it could find. The cold was unforgiving. The cold was cruel.

Thirty minutes into this walk, we had only made it to the half-paved bridge. The cold humbled us and blew us back into the icebox of a car. The cold dangled weakness over my head, dangled every piece of dignity I had left in front of me.

The cold was torture. Even if I haven’t physically felt the cold follow me into grocery stores and coffee shops, it was there. It was there with me in my ill-lit bedroom. The cold followed me on my way to every science and math test I have ever taken. The cold followed my mom to Erie. The cold followed my dad to Cuyahoga. The cold follows.

Trying to find a heater to eliminate the cold seemed almost impossible—until I remembered my snow army. When pushing the boulder, my body struggled to hold the pressure. It would roll away, then again (and again). I never gave up. My eyes would leak icicles, and my whole body was paralyzed. No matter how many times my parents yelled to get inside, I insisted on making myself one with the cold. I accepted it.

To fight the cold was to accept the cold. It’s always there. Always piercing my skin and making peoples’ noses bleed. It steals innocence away and never returns. The cold is always behind us, whispering secrets and anxieties in our ears. 

The cold is real and it must be faced.