Keep Calm and Enjoy the Storm
There is a downpour tonight and I've settled into my butt-print in our bean bag chair with the sliding door open, listening to the splash and splatter of giant raindrops mingled with fast, bright flashes of light. It's interesting that I find these sounds soothing now. There was a time I was terrified of thunder storms, stretching well into my adult years. Storms triggered my anxiety for some reason. Driving during storms was a nightmare for me. The world looks so different when it's wet, gloomy, and depressed. Lightning scared me after I watched a tree get zapped by a flash of light when I was younger. I used to shut everything down and off during rain storms. Closed the windows securely and turned on loud music to ignore the sounds.
One night, several days after the man I thought was the love of my life told me he wanted a divorce, there was a thunder storm. I was in the middle of doing all the shut-myself-in rituals during a storm alone because he didn't come home that night, knowing he would never come home again, and then I felt like something inside me broke. I may have gone a little mad, lost my mind a bit. I flung the door of our apartment open, walked out into the wet night, took ginger but hasty steps into the middle of the downpour while lightning splinters across the horizon and thunder rumbled ferociously, and threw my arms up in the air and screamed as loud as the thunder. And when my lungs ran out of air to sustain that scream, I waited seconds and then minutes, standing out there in the rain, getting completely soaked from head to toe. The rain cooled my hot, angry tears. The thunder raced with my heart. The lightning electrified my soul with it's flashes, absorbing flares of every emotion that had been suppressed for such a long time.
I never knew that I could find so much comfort in thunderstorms because I had feared it for so long, thinking it was a sign of bad things to come; it was an omen of doom and misfortune. But it was in the moment of great misfortune that I found respite in something so simple as a storm. The storm within was tamed by the storm without because somehow I didn't feel alone. Everything would go wrong, but it would all be okay. Countless women all over the world had stood and would stand in my shoes, walking out into the storms of their perfect lives all of a sudden aware that nothing would be the same or like they'd imagined.
So tonight I'm enjoying watching the earth get watered like a garden, the droplets sweeping across the slick street as the wind slaps them around. Every green thing breathes a sigh of relief, branches and leaves raised in grateful praise. The puddles reflect the skies above so that the world looks mirrored and upside down.
The fears and burdens of yesteryear are the litmus of how much I've changed and grown. I have grown past that childish, puerile fear of thunderstorms and relish the calm and peace I experience when I embrace the beauty of something that was once fearsome. Now I'm ready to jump out of an airplane to conquer my fear of heights.....JUST KIDDING!!! I haven't done that much growing yet!
One night, several days after the man I thought was the love of my life told me he wanted a divorce, there was a thunder storm. I was in the middle of doing all the shut-myself-in rituals during a storm alone because he didn't come home that night, knowing he would never come home again, and then I felt like something inside me broke. I may have gone a little mad, lost my mind a bit. I flung the door of our apartment open, walked out into the wet night, took ginger but hasty steps into the middle of the downpour while lightning splinters across the horizon and thunder rumbled ferociously, and threw my arms up in the air and screamed as loud as the thunder. And when my lungs ran out of air to sustain that scream, I waited seconds and then minutes, standing out there in the rain, getting completely soaked from head to toe. The rain cooled my hot, angry tears. The thunder raced with my heart. The lightning electrified my soul with it's flashes, absorbing flares of every emotion that had been suppressed for such a long time.
I never knew that I could find so much comfort in thunderstorms because I had feared it for so long, thinking it was a sign of bad things to come; it was an omen of doom and misfortune. But it was in the moment of great misfortune that I found respite in something so simple as a storm. The storm within was tamed by the storm without because somehow I didn't feel alone. Everything would go wrong, but it would all be okay. Countless women all over the world had stood and would stand in my shoes, walking out into the storms of their perfect lives all of a sudden aware that nothing would be the same or like they'd imagined.
So tonight I'm enjoying watching the earth get watered like a garden, the droplets sweeping across the slick street as the wind slaps them around. Every green thing breathes a sigh of relief, branches and leaves raised in grateful praise. The puddles reflect the skies above so that the world looks mirrored and upside down.
The fears and burdens of yesteryear are the litmus of how much I've changed and grown. I have grown past that childish, puerile fear of thunderstorms and relish the calm and peace I experience when I embrace the beauty of something that was once fearsome. Now I'm ready to jump out of an airplane to conquer my fear of heights.....JUST KIDDING!!! I haven't done that much growing yet!
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