Dear rain,
I’ve spent many a summer day laying in you, dancing through you, swimming underneath you.
Skipping down a sidewalk in the dark, looking up at the ripples underwater, running to the car for fourth-period lunch senior year of high school. Going down a waterslide the day of my middle school graduation, filming an overly dramatic music video, kissing the love of my life.
Rain, you have always been there. In both my best and worst moments, in the nights when I needed comfort the most. In the nights when I felt the most scared and alone, you protected me. You reminded me that the world is alive, that I’m not the only one awake, that morning will come and the night will end and this too shall pass.
I have to confess that sometimes I prefer you over sun. I’m weird in that way. I enjoy the way you make me feel, the bubbly feeling I get when I hear you begin to trickle on the roof outside. I realize that I may get to walk through you, to hold my textbooks over my head or to cuddle up inside my rain jacket. Then sometimes, I don’t do any of that. I walk proudly through you -- granted, I will smell like a wet dog later -- splashing through puddles and holding my face up to the sky.
Remember that time I danced through you? Spinning in my driveway, makeup running down my face? Lip-syncing some horrible early-2000s song, thinking about some boy who didn’t like me back? Below is an actual screenshot from that exact moment I’m describing, and it’s everything you imagined it would be. (#MiddleSchool)
Dear rain, with you I can be free. I can let go. I can forget about the clothes that are about to be drenched, the shoes about to smell, the makeup about to run. The world falls away and all that’s left is pure nature, pure life.
When I'm sad, you comfort me. When I'm happy, you excite me. Again, I’m weird that way.
Yes, I realize I’m talking to water here, so I know you can’t really hear me. Unless maybe I’m talking to whoever produces the rain. Mother Nature, God, the mystical cloud fairy -- either way, keep it coming. You make life pop out of the ground, clean my ever-dirty car, cause me to get to buy cute umbrellas, the list continues on.
But most importantly, you make the world come to life. Conclusion? You’re pretty damn amazing.
