It's hard to speak on the weather in any form without sounding cliche, especially the rain. As a rejection note, Sylvia Plath once received read "After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN come pouring in from across the nation." Of course, they do. Everyone tries to become a poet after Mother Nature shows her power.

Especially whenever she cries upon us, whether in small doses or in a torrential sobbing that leaves us shaken to our cores, our spines shaped into weeping willows until she clears her skies and we can again be proud sunflowers. But to whose character does this cycle speak? Mother Nature's or humanity?

As I am not a celestial being with the knowledge of whether grand scale phenomena like the weather are sentient, I'm inclined to say that humanity is the one defined by our fascination with water falling from the sky. For good reason, too. There are many worse defining characteristics about our species than the rain tapping us into our creative outlets for a few hours or days at a time.

The only problem I have with Plath's rejection notice, beyond the fact that it was a rejection sent to Sylvia Plath herself, is the assumption that everything about rain is so similar that they all should be dismissed out of hand. Everyone has their own take on the weather, and even if they only string together cliches, they're likely to in unique ways. Not everything inspired by the rain has to be a poem, either.

People have made fantastic art and literature that goes beyond the realm of poetry simply by experiencing the familiar sensation of walking out of their front door and through a shower to their next location. Rain affects us all differently, and on this extremely rainy day, I am expressing how it affects me, dear readers, by telling you more about my life.

My fascination with rain began around the time as most of my fascinations. When I first became cognizant and could remember feeling emotions after those emotions were gone. I was young, and I hated the rain. Being made uncomfortable simply by going outside, one of my favorite places to be was miserable.

Having to cancel plans and outings because the atmosphere decided to let moisture loose upon us was so inconvenient. I lived in Kansas and rain seemed to come at the most inopportune times whenever it decided to visit, and never when it was wanted. I knew the tune "Rain, Rain, go away..." well before I knew the warning signs of rain or what caused it to occur. But this hatred did not last.

I moved to Arizona, and my relationship with rain became more complex. It became more foreign to me than ever before, as did the ill effects of its appearance. Plans almost always went as expected, playing outside became unavailable due to the heat more so than the midwestern rain had ever barred me from it, and humidity was a concept I never needed to remember existed.

The rain was rarely the fickle creature I had known it to be, no longer a deer popping up out of nowhere and wrecking your car. It did, however, become much harder to find when it was needed, like a naturist's lifelong search for a cryptid in order to prove a local legend. And, much like these myths, sightings were frequent, every summer brought about a monsoon season with warm tropical storms' overhang crashing down around us for days at a time, but proving rain's existence to anyone who wasn't there to see it with you proved impossible.

Here, the rain became a great game for me, playing in the flash floods building up in the street in our little suburb. Rain provided new sights, new smells, and a great soundtrack to fall asleep to. Summer rains were my first true love, and whether or not the love was required, I still feel longingly attached to them.

Much like any first love, however, our affair was too short-lived, as my family relocated back to Kansas again, and this time I was utterly unprepared for the weather that came with it. In my five year stay in Arizona, I had grown so accustomed to the weather present there that I had forgotten how bitterly cold, how muggy and hot, and how miserable in general the weather in Kansas could be. It was as if I'd never experienced real weather before, those first couple years.

Try as I might, I could never anticipate what would come next as the central location on this continent left me in the most fickle part of nature's personality. Eventually, however, in the same way, a new friend's obnoxious quirks do, the weather's unpredictability grew on me.

Over the course of the latter half of my primary education, I started to become more and more of a fan of rain yet again, no longer feeling betrayed by its inopportune moments. Learning to love the weather took more than just knowing there was no other choice, though. A lot of my newfound love came from people showing me the joys once again.

Once, on a family trip in Iowa, a massive storm hit. My cousin and I spent hours playing in the downpour, trying not to get swept downhill by the flooding waters starting to fill the gutters and the street in general until the lightning returned and we had to seek shelter once again.

Hearing songs about the rain, reading novels during storms, watching episodes of tv shows that take place during foul weather all influenced me and how I learned to romanticize the rain. My grandmother adored the song "No Rain" by Blind Melon, and not just because of bee girl, and that became one of my biggest eye-openers early on that rain didn't have to be negative, even if the media kept saying it was.

Finally, I had an hour-long conversation with one of the most influential friends in my life about why she adores the rain that completely changed me as a person, as talking with her about anything often has. Rain never made me feel bad again, even when it made me physically miserable.

As my life has furthered, so has my appreciation for the gift of rain. I've made my way to Missouri for college and experienced a new form of fickle weather, I've gotten deep into astrology (I'm a Pisces) and blamed it for my attraction to water in all forms, and I've met a slew of new friends who fuel my creative flame in many ways, all within a much shorter timeframe than any other era of my life.

Whether it lulls me to sleep on an anxious night, cools off the heat the day before big plans outdoors, serves as a form of free entertainment, or just provides soft background noise during a productive day doing homework, rain has an important place in my life and treats me so well, that I never mind the times it lashes out freezing cold against my face in mid-winter.

No matter the metaphor, no matter the media or literature, no matter how cliche, no matter how overwhelmingly numerous, rain inspires us to create and with good measure. Whether you are motivated, torn apart, or made indifferent by the rain, your approach is valid. We as people are not the same, and cannot typically be generalized.

The effect of rain on the human mind, however, remains one of the few universal truths. Rain is so good to me and keeps the planet going in many ways. Sylvia Plath's statement on not writing about rain rings just as deep a statement as her actually writing a poem titled 'rain' would have because it allows us to realize just how strong its effects are felt by humanity as a whole. We need rain, whether we like it or not, and as much as we claim not to, we love rain in some way, it gets to our hearts like few other things can.

No matter how much we may wish it gone, never forget the end of the jingle says "come again some other day," because we never want it gone for good. Rain is a frustrating, unpredictable lover, but it's a lover nonetheless. So cry, cry upon us in waves, Mother Nature, we will always be waiting down here to catch and to wipe your tears. I know I will.