Rainy Daze

Rainy Daze

By fourth-year claire d’agostino

Rain is my least favorite type of weather. Yes, I understand the appeal of a rainy day when you are sequestered inside, cuddled up to your cat with a mug of earl gray tea and a blanket draped across your lap. But to me the rain is suffocating. If I stand up from my couch and open the front door, the wicks of my almond croissant scented candle may be blown out by the gusts of wind, or my freshly blow dried bangs will be ruined from the mere act of being near the water.

Maybe I move upstairs to my desk in an attempt to be productive after skipping my class because I didn’t want to brave the downpour. I open my computer and log in to my email, but I am immediately distracted by other things. Phil from ZipRecruiter - Give these jobs a glance! I begin to spiral, thinking of my lack of post-graduation plans and how my English degree might only lead me to be a barista.

I attempt to conjure up some ghost of a draft for my paper due next week, but I stare as blankly at the page as it stares back at me. Blank. The cursor looks like the letter I. I hate how when you type a capital I, it does not have the lines on the top and the bottom. I am lowercase. I—

I watch the raindrops fall to the bottom of the window like my brother and I would watch them race down the car window on roadtrips. Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. I can look back at cherished memories and preserve them in amber, locking them up in a golden cage. But I also look back and feel an irrevocable sense of sadness for the fact that I can never live a life as simple as childhood again. 

When I think of the rain, I think that I cannot be too hard on it because the earth needs nourishment, too. It washes any bad things that have happened to the ground and gives the flowers a chance to grow again. A clean slate. Isn’t that what we all want, anyways? 

I think that maybe my overthinking is not the rain’s fault. Although the day turns dark and dreary with its arrival, it dissipates and leaves dew droplets on the green grass and a new pinkness to the tulips. Maybe I should take it as a sign. That I, too, can start anew. That the unknown future is not so intimidating; rather, I am not confined to a single path and the world is open to me.