rain

This is dedicated to those who haven't felt the rain yet or have lost the rain.

Rain comes in many forms. It can be light and ignored, "just a little rain." At times rain comes and goes in the blink of an eye, fleeting, leaving you wondering what happened. Other times it will come down with all its fury, swallow you whole, and leave nothing behind when it has left. There are so many more, but this is my rain story.

As a kid I never really cared about the rain. I didn't quite understand it, the only thing that I knew about it was that it got my shoes wet and that it usually came with the cold. Rain was the last thing on my mind, I wanted to have fun. Of course, it rained sometimes, but it had the same effect on me as a drop of water in the desert.

It wasn't until say, grade 5 or 6, when it began. A gentle rain came upon me, and I was enamored. I'd spend hours listening to the pitter patter of the rain on my window. I faked the same enthusiasm my classmates had for sunny weather, secretly wishing to see the rain.

This marks the first time I fell in love with the rain.

I loved it so much, it was a warm spring rain, one you would go in without an umbrella.

But nothing in life lasts forever - my gentle rain left with the end of the spring.

My understanding of rain was still rudimentary at this point. All I knew about it was what I had seen in movies and shows. I decided I needed to find another rain, I had to have one. By grade 7 I found my second rain. It was harder than the first one, but I didn't love it any less.

I don't know why, but as I grew older, the rain started becoming less and less important. At some point, it even became a bother when I wanted to go outside and play with my friends.

So I moved and said goodbye.

I entered high school at this point, and it rained a lot in my first year.

I thought I loved one rain, but after a few days of raining, I found I didn't. I hurt its feelings and I wouldn't see it again until my first year of university.

There was another rain I fell in love with, but I thought it loved another person, so I grew angry at it and told it to go away forever.

The third rain of high school was brief, and it visited me during grade 9. I thought I knew everything about rain, but in reality I was as dumb as a bag of bricks. At this point I only knew how the rain sounded and how it felt under an umbrella.

My fourth rain of high school marks the first rain that I felt for myself. It happened in grade 10, and it was unexpected. People didn't expect me to like the rain, let alone have the rain like me. With this rain I stuck my hand out from under the umbrella and smiled as it tickled me. I loved this rain, I'm sure, but now when I think about it, I have no idea why I did. Rain just comes and goes like that.

I started wanting to spend every moment with the rain. When it was sunny I was unhappy, and I only looked for the rain. Then one day the rain disappeared. I asked my good friends, the clouds, why, and they said

the
rain
feels
suffocated.

And that's how I lost that rain. I killed it with my own hands.

Grade 11 came, and that was when the seventh rain of my life visited me, the longest rain of my life.

I didn't learn my lesson from the last rain, and I suffocated the rain, but it was fine with it. It smiled and listened to me quietly. Usually the rain was soft and warm, but sometimes I got into fights with the rain and a vicious storm would brew in us. We would always go back to that warm and happy place though.

I spent countless days sitting on the park bench in the rain. I let it drown and engulf me, but I didn't care, I wanted it to. I wanted everything that the rain had to give me, and I wanted to give it everything I had. I lived for the rain. Everywhere I went, the rain came with me, and I never used an umbrella.

The rain was my everything.

So why did I do that?

I think the worst thing about raining is that at some point, you take it for granted. I know I did.

"It's your fault I got sick," I said to the rain one day.

I said this and many other things, misdirecting frustrations and anger at the rain, the rain that had been there for me when I needed it the most. The rain faltered, and it blew wildly. I saw what damage I had caused to my precious rain, but I thought I could fix it.

I finished high school and entered university. It was a difficult time for me, getting used to everything, but I knew that I had the rain by my side to escape from the glaring sun.

Then one day, it happened.

I cried and I asked, "I thought things were getting better?"

The rain said that they had, but it didn't feel the same way anymore.

The rain stopped following me that day, only allowing me to talk to it from under an umbrella, and always moving away when I tried to run towards it. It hurt, it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt, but it hurt even more to think about what I had done to the rain to make it act this way. It was my fault right? My chest felt like it was going to burst open, I wanted more days with the rain, I wanted to feel its cool embrace on my skin.

I became bitter whenever I talked to the rain from under my umbrella. At that point in time, I was ugliest I had ever been. I felt the ugliest. I was volatile, and my emotions flipped with a single word. I should have just left it alone, but I couldn't. I couldn't give up that rain. It sounds dumb, but I genuinely believed that I was going to spend the rest of my life with it.

And that brings me to now. It hasn't rained in months, even when I bring an umbrella in hopes it will. I want it to, but it said it wasn't coming back. It's so dry.

I don't know what rain is anymore.