Winter of 2015

I'd run water into the sink and hear it fall out the drain and into the bucket below. I became intimate with my consumption of water and food. For exercise, I'd shiver. The walls were never insulated, and despite the mild winter I still endured freezing conditions inside that dilapidated house nearly every single night. My desk was an inactive furnace, and for warmth I'd pitch a tent in the middle of the room and shove my laptop into a sleeping bag to allow the warm air from the fans to become trapped within the bag.

My partner at the time found this house for me, and if it wasn't for the wifi I'd have been much better of finding a more traditional squat. The landlord lived above me and was bizarre in a way that you'd only find in the Midwest. He was older than me by seven or eight years, and had become enveloped in debauchery as soon as AOL chatrooms first became a thing. He was unemployed aside from the occasional self-appointed technical support, and so me living there was an opportunity for him to continue his trend of working on when necessary.

I was miserable at the time, and in such a profound way that I have never quite felt since. After the first week or two my partner would visit periodically, but rarely spent more time with me than she wanted. There were considerably warmer places for her to stay. The landlord above me would bring women over periodically and fuck them for hours on end, and always with such tremendous gusto that it was impossible to do anything other than listen to the frantic pounding and shrieks of pleasure.

I'd imagine that was the time frame of my life where I really stopped giving a fuck. I'd abandoned a comfortable middle-class life to a house that should have been a squat, where once a day or so I'd have to lift my ass off the toilet seat to keep from freezing to it. I'd brought a young failed Catholic monk to that space one time who I'd met out in public and told me he was too drunk to drive home. I gave him weed for the first time ever and that night he wouldn't shut the fuck up about how euphoric he was. I remember watching him shiver on the couch from inside my tent. In the morning he quietly said goodbye and went on his way. I still wonder if he'd understood why I chose to live that way.

You see...There is not much we really need in this life. Food, shelter, some warmth, and some company from time to time. We make up problems that are unique only to those living comfortable lives: the margarita tastes too sour, the massage chair remote is malfunctioning, the heated seats in the Lexus are too hot.

Our comfort leads us to forget that there are many who cannot stop shivering. Our comfort leads us to forget that the money our government removes from our checks each week contributes to global suffering on a scale that is almost certainly incomprehensible. I spent a long winter thinking about how good I'd had it my entire life.

Now, two years later, the water in a different sink falls out the drain and into the bucket below. I'm gearing up for another long winter...