When I was growing up I always thought that I had it very rough.
I definitely grew up in a challenging home where we didn’t exactly get along with each other.
My parents had their own mental health issues and they passed them right along to their kids. I understand why things happened this way but I also felt like I got jipped out of a good family experience. I also always felt as though I was lacking in the heating and air conditioning department. We weren’t allowed to use the thermostat in our house because it was too expensive. If we turned on any of the indoor air handling devices my parents would get very upset. Although we had an air conditioning unit and forced air furnace, they were off-limits to all of us. I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the warm indoor air that I had to live with as a kid. I was wrong. Soon after moving out I wound up in a small apartment where I had three roommates. There were four bedrooms in the apartment but only one air conditioning unit. And it wasn’t a large, powerful cooling system. We had one AC window unit in the living room and that was it. We couldn’t have air conditioning units in our bedrooms because the windows opened the wrong way. Unfortunately, this became the most hot and difficult place I’ve ever lived. I’ve never had such brutal humidity and overheated nights as I experienced in this place. Suddenly, my childhood home didn’t look so bad – actually, it seemed pretty cool.