This is the Storm

There was a time I walked between the raindrops. Side-stepping so many negativities and hardships, thinking myself clever and some form of lucky. Somewhere along the line the drops that fell got bigger, they became more frequent, and I ceased being able to evade them. A downpour ensued. I fought against it. I first turned up my collar, thinking it soon would pass or I would reach my destination. It did not. I did not. I pulled my coat tighter about my torso and opened an umbrella. The the wind picked up. It rendered the umbrella useless. I dragged its inverted, pointless, remains behind me as I trudged through the storm. As I felt the water compromise my shoes, bleeding through my socks and dampening my feet, I realized the uselessness of the umbrella and I let it go. As my coat soaked through I looked up and asked why. In bleak, blue- blackness, I cursed the skies for this storm. I finally sat. I cradled my legs. I had doubt. I felt defeat. I had become lost.

As I sat in a swiftly forming pool of water, I hung my head and thought. In theory I could stand. In theory I could keep walking. In theory the rain had to cease… but it would eventually begin again. And I would eventually tire again. So would I stand and go through that all just to eventually sit back down?

I felt the answer was yes.

I sank my face into my hands and sobbed. For how long I do not know, a moment, an eternity. Time is swift. Time is slow. It does as it pleases- prolonging the painful and racing through raptures. My sorrow gave way to anger. I pounded my fists in the mud and screamed into the heavens with all the might my lungs could muster. As my breath gave out and my voice cracked from strain I looked into my hands. My hands. Hands I had previously thought so powerful, powerful in their skill and tactility, now seemingly deprived the chance to prove their virtue. I watched the rain softly splash against them. I watched the drops flow through my fingers, around my palms, and leap toward the ground. And I noticed my tears do the same. The very thing I had turned my coat against, tried to shield myself from, the thing which had forced me to the ground, caused me pain and doubt and rage- that thing is the very thing of which we are all made.

And so I stood up.

I began to walk. I took off my jacket. A tool which had protected me as best it could for the time it had, and I carefully folded it. I gently placed it on the earth, thinking, hoping it would some day dry and protect someone else a little further back in their own storm. Now I felt the rain gently fall upon my face, moving down my neck. It speckled my exposed arms and dripped off my finger tips. I invited it. I was in a storm. It was natural. It was beautiful. It was a necessary part of life.

I then began to run.

Slowly at first, until my legs could remember. They knew this movement. Then faster as my mind began to clear. Running in the rain- the coolness of it tempering your body’s increasing warmth, the crispness of its air in your lungs- not many things can be more life affirming, symbiotic, beautiful. So something forgotten began to form across my face. Something that had not happened for some time. A thunderous bolt of lightning crashed across the sky, illuminating the path ahead. I could see nothing but sharp inclines, which must be followed by swift descents. A smile moved across my entire face, terraforming my demeanor. My legs quickened and I ran straight toward those unknown hills. Water kicking up behind me, tears soaked into me, and rain splashing my face.

This is the storm.