The Rooms We Didn't Heat

Old houses have ghosts — not the supernatural kind, but the emotional kind. Ours had rooms we barely entered in winter because they swallowed warmth faster than we could generate it. But some rooms we avoided year-round for different reasons: storage spaces filled with things we never talked about, old clothes from people who were no longer alive, boxes stacked like unspoken stories.

I remember avoiding one back room entirely. It wasn’t scary; it was heavy. It felt like the collected past of the family settling in the corners. As a child, I didn’t have language for it, only instinct.

Some spaces in childhood aren’t just unheated — they’re unfinished parts of the self.