Do they see? They must notice, for sure, but how? What gives it away? What’s so different about me that they see it? Can they smell it on me? What is the conclusion? What was this for? Can I just put a band-aid on it if I complain enough to a psychiatrist? Will they just lock me up? They’re just like the rest of them, too. Maybe this is why some people talk to themselves and answer back. I will find some of them and ask them if it ever gets any better, any less lonely, any less of a torturously lonely existence.

Maybe one day I will look back and it won’t hurt anymore, maybe one day, somehow. Maybe I can become a zombie, somehow. Maybe I can even find someone who isn’t a zombie before becoming one myself, somehow. Or maybe I can just stop caring, somehow. Is there a chance?

I grew up in warm places. Yes, the places everyone in cold countries save up the entire year just to visit for a while when they have holidays. I grew up in the warm Mediterranean and spent some summers in the warm Latin America. The coldest I had ever seen before travelling up north was during one or two days that I saw a bit of snow fall one day, which disappeared by the same afternoon, when the sun rose high, powerful, brave, everpresent, making a statement, saying ‘This is my kingdom, not yours, you disastruous cold jet stream, I rule here’.

I used to go to recess during autumn wearing a T-shirt, thinking that if I practiced enough by feeling a bit chilly for half an hour at 14 degrees Celsius (or 57 Fahrenheit), I would maybe be strong enough to do the same in snowy Siberia one day, while travelling on the Transiberian for God knows how long. I used to watch videos of Russians jumping into the cold icy water, and Finnish people running from the sauna to the snow in complete and absolute awe, thinking ‘Just how can you train your body to achieve such an extraordinary feat?’

To me, the heat wasn’t that big of a deal. Anyone could live when it’s hot, just stay inside, or get under some shadow, or pour some water on yourself. But oh, was it annoying. Everyday was a sunny day, no day went below 10 degrees Celsius (or 50 Fahrenheit), if it rained, it was for a day or two in a row during Mediterranean springs, autumns and winters, and it was summer storms in both the Mediterranean and Latin America: hot nights full of thunders and lightnings, it was fun. Cloudy and rainy days in the Mediterranean were calm, reflective days. Warm cups of tea, warm hearty soup; looking at people running, getting wet on the street while I smiled from my warm room window; tucking myself into bed with thick, warm blankets and duvets; going out in fancy winter clothes. Winters were just a ‘put on a beautiful jacket and your boots, it’s cold’, a ‘cool, we finally get a break from the heat’.

So, in my naïveté, when I left the Mediterranean for the Atlantic to fly away from my nest to a bigger, better one, I didn’t think it could be much worse. Yes, the sky would be grey instead of blue and yes, it would be a bit colder, but everything would also be green, alive and beautiful. No more droughts, no more sudden floods. Everyday, except for the summer, probably, it would just be those calm, reflective days, with warm cups of tea, warm hearty soups; looking at people running, getting wet on the street while I smiled from my warm room window; tucking myself into bed with thick, warm blankets and duvets; going out in fancy winter clothes — all that, but a little harder and for many more days a year.

I initially didn’t notice anything was wrong, it was summer, and it was a temperate summer. I wasn’t sweating like a roasted chicken, I was just enjoying myself at 23 degrees Celsius at most (or 74 Fahrenheit). Ice-cream was good, everything else was too. And when autumn started, the days got a bit cooler, greyer, rainier. It was just a mild, constant drizzle. Going to the supermarket, going for a walk to parks or to the city-centre, going out with friends… It all just still worked. My cheeks and nose were always red, my hands and feet were always cold, but I had always been prone to it, despite all my Siberian training.

Slowly, though, I started to notice it was harder and harder to catch the Sun, it was like he was ghosting me. I would wake up and know it was there, behind all the clouds, it would peek from behind them here and there, and then, by the start of mid afternoon, night would start falling. I was happy, wasn’t I? This was what I always wanted. But at the same time, I started to feel something creeping in, from under my skin. That something started telling me something wasn’t right.

It wasn’t fun to walk under the rain all the time, in fact, my shoes started breaking and my soles would get soaked for a few days, before I got to the conclusion I needed new ones. It was hard to carry bags full of groceries back home, because I needed both hands to carry them, and I didn’t have a third one to hold an umbrella over my head. The bags were heavy and the plastic, thin and tense over my fingers, was hurting them, leaving them red and numb. I was trying to hold on walking, while the heavy bags hitting my shins repeatedly and hurt my fingers, but the cold drops of water falling on my head and my cotton hood —which was drenched by the time I reached home if not by the time I reached the supermarket— riled me up. It was the cherry on top.

I had always liked going for walks, those pointless ones when you just wander around, enjoy the views of trees, and houses, and rivers, and churches, and people, and parks, and birds. Those when you just get fixated on a particular shop and you just have to enter to see what they have, to explore, as if you were on an urban safari and, hey, this isn’t lions, but those unexpected antelopes sure are interesting too. But after months of that weather, I could see myself retreating further and further at home, drinking tea, watching videos, sitting on my desk chair, because sitting on bed was too much, right? But, eventually, it was too cold, so bed was more comfortable.

Living in bed — eating, doomscrolling, working even — was unacceptable, wasn’t it? But, eventually, just like all the bad things, the slippery slope catches you and convinces you it’s not much worse than the previous boundary of yours that you crossed, so you just shrug and comply with the distorted instinct of comfort that’s telling you to slouch, hang your mouth open, eat something soft as baby food and just watch something else.

Before I noticed, it was so cold that I was using two or three layers of clothes, and showering meant taking that protective mass of fabric off me, and making my hair wet and cold, so I could only do it while daylight —if it could be called that way— was there. The kitchen was also so cold, I tried to warm my hands with the stove while shivering. The kitchen, despite being beside the tiny patio, had some light during the day but no warmth, as the sun was on the opposite side of the house, and it received mostly shadows.

I would assume that knowing the weather, the house would have a dryer, and it did, it was a mode on the washing machine, but it was broken. The tiny rectangular patio, though, had a beautiful rope that crossed it completely from the beginning to the end of its longer side. How cool, the calm air and the warm sun would dry my clothes, right? Right? No, no it wouldn’t. Because it rained everyday, remember? So time to use the rack inside and place all clothes with the precision of a tetris play so that they all fit but didn’t touch, that would make them not smell of mildew, right? Right? Also wrong, the air is damp, everything smells of mildew. Do you want dry, nice-smelling clothes? Welcome to the world of laundromats, laundrettes, wash-a-terias.

When I visited other cities for tourism, I wasn’t enjoying it. Sure, it was all beautiful, amazing, I felt like I was living history and culture. But it felt like a chore. I thought: okay, let’s get done with this, I’ll get back to my warm room as soon as I’m done, so let’s get done with it quickly. I bought the nicest and cheapest souvenirs while enjoying being under a roof and behind a wall, but wanting to get done with it too. Enjoying was a luxury that I was, apparently, obviously, too poor to afford.

Doing anything felt heavier than before, somehow, I was carrying double my weight whenever I walked, cooked, worked, ate. Everything was heavier, the atmosphere, the air felt heavier, even my lungs had this funny feeling if I breathed in deeply. I guess that’s why older locals were coughing their lungs out every morning. It was as if the sun took my joy and energy with it, and I couldn’t get them back as long as those permanently stationed clouds were up there, between us, separating us. I started resenting them. ‘Look at those [redacted (add your favourite insult)], they’re still there, they have been for weeks. I thought they would give me a break today, but no, they’re still there. When are they leaving?’, was all I could think of when I opened my eyes in the morning and looked at the sky, begging for mercy.

I was starting to understand why they flooded our airports, cities, beaches and hotels as soon as they were temporarily released from their slavery, I mean, job. How could they live like this for so long? I wanted to hug them all, and tell them they were alwsys right, and to please let’s join forces and fight for us all to get climate refugee status in, say, Papua New Guinea, maybe? Then they confessed: they all took vitamin D supplements. Otherwise, it got too bad. People usually abuse substances or try to end their lives in the river, or both.

But that wasn’t all: they were taller, had thicker bones, paler skin, lighter eyes, lighter hair. You couldn’t see their veins through their milk-white skin. I was short, my bones were smaller, my skin, hair and eyes were darker. My hands were all patchy, visible, they looked like a corpse’s —vasoconstriction, wrong type. And then it hit me: biology. Socially, I was just one more inhabitant, with the same rights, the same responsibilities, the same value. Biologically, though… my body shook its head no, smirked, no, laughed, and said to me: I can see you, you aren’t like them, you don’t get to thrive in this weather. My room mates, from the Balkans, Latin America and Africa, also suffered. They understood. Their bodies also laughed and told them they were exposed, and that they wouldn’t oblige to be okay.

I just hugged my body —it finally stopped laughing, surprised, the irking inner sound finally out of my mind— and I said to it ‘you don’t need to adapt to this, we’ll get somewhere better for us soon, now swallow your daily vitamin D, darling’, and I imagined all my little cells felt happy that they were finally eating some of it, even if it supposed to be a supplement, not a replacement, even if it was in artificial form, even if it was still cold and my hands were still patchy, even if my head was always wet when I was walking outside. And while I warmed a hand between my thighs, I looked for flights out of there in the following months, still innocently, naïvely, not knowing the Atlantic and the jet stream had fallen in love with me and would follow me anywhere I went from now on. Climate change, they call it, but no, it’s the Atlantic curse.