I Tasted The Rain Today......

I tasted the rain today....

Sometimes when everything gets so bogged down and the anxiety gets too much, I start to lose my ability to tell which way is the sky and which way is the ground. I feel like I am hurtling towards something fast approaching. Something solid and formidable. Something cold and hard. I am aware that this mythical thing I am falling towards is going to hurt when I finally hit it. Hurt badly. Probably break every bone in my body and it terrifies me.

Sometimes I feel the anxiety crawling around my ankles like shackles. I feel weighted to the ground. I feel like I am drowning. Drowning in my own fear, my own perceptions, my own terror. No, not drowning exactly, suffocating. My fear is heavy and damp and it rests on my chest like a wall of concrete. I can not breathe. I can not speak. I can not fathom how I am going to get through this again.

Sometimes it all seems too loud, too much, too fast. I am standing motionless while everything else whizzes by me. The sun rises, the birds fly over head, the school bus drives away, the car horns blare with impatience, the murmurs of everyday life go on and on and on. People walk by and never look in my direction, the wind blows the papers into the street, the newspaper kid throws morning papers on everyone else's front lawns, each one landing with the definable sound of....plop....plop...plop. I can hear the breeze in the grass, the crickets chirp, the sounds of someone slurping the last of their coffee as they head to their car for work. I hear everything and I feel everything almost intimately but only inside my head. This is insanity and I know it and yet here it is. My life. And I want to rage against being so damn dysfunctional and weird and sensitive. I want to get angry but I am too wrapped up in my own anxiety to become angry anymore.

And just when I think that everything is too much to deal with, just when I start to think that I am not going to be able to do something as small as walk to the fucking car and go where I need to go, the skies overhead turn grey. I can smell the damp scent of the earth rising from the ground. The noises are hushed by the soft patter of the rain. I feel the droplets bead on my arms as I turn my face  up to the sky and let them wash over me. I baptize myself with the rain and the anxiety and the noises. This is life, my life, and it is strange but no one ever said that life was normal, or fair, or even remotely sensical. No, life is just life and since you are going to get wet, you might as well taste the rain while you are at it.

As I stand there, drenched, chilled, and a bit calmer...I have an epiphany. Not all of life is lived in the big scary moments. Just as much life is lived in the quiet tiny moments too. It isn't just the big things. It is the big things and the small things and everything in between. Life is the tough times, the hard times, the fun times. And even when there is no hardships, or tough times, or fun...life is being lived there too. So, don't cry because the anxiety made you take too long to get to the car and you got caught out in a storm. Laugh because without it, you would have missed the storm altogether. You would have missed the coolness of the breeze, the rumbling of the thunder. the lightening dancing in the sky. You would have missed the life in between the extreme and the calm and that would have been unfortunate. For I believe that no one should ever miss the chance to stand in the rain and taste it.

Neurotic Nelly