It's not the beautiful, happy shivers that come from the weather or the pilot light's extinguishing or anything along those lines. It's the chill that grips you from the inside out, making you painfully numb, not just shivering, but shuddering in the feel of it.

In my blacker moods, in my sadder moments, this ice coats my insides. I stop caring about anything and everything. I stop trying. Nothing is worth the effort anymore, nothing is worth fighting against the cold. My skin prickles, the chill inhabiting it, stealing all the warmth and feelings of well-being from it.

I want nothing more than to curl up and forget. I want to let the freezing winds blow over my form and wipe away any thoughts of anything but the all-consuming cold. I want to weep frozen tears in mourning for the loss of everything, even while I forget that there was ever anything but the cold. I want to sleep deeply, completely.

As I shiver violently, as blankets do nothing to ease the chill that holds me from head to toe, as my teeth chatter and I struggle to keep my eyes open, as the tips of my fingers go numb, I contemplate the cold and the reasons I feel this way, and I find my own whispered words echoing endlessly inside my head:

I'm sorry.