The Rainstorm

It started with a whisper—just a hush of wind against the windows and a subtle darkening of the sky. I remember glancing up from my laptop, noting the shift in light, and thinking, It’ll pass. But of course, it didn’t. The clouds gathered with purpose, and by the time the first drops hit the sidewalk, I sensed that something more than weather was arriving.

There’s something ancient about a storm. It stirs more than the air; it stirs memory, emotion, the things we keep politely buried under the business of everyday life. As the rain thickened into a curtain outside my apartment, I stood at the window and watched the world become a watercolor—edges blurred, people running for cover, car headlights glowing like tiny lanterns in the gray.

And then came the silence. Not the absence of sound, but that quiet that only happens when the rain becomes so loud it drowns everything else. That’s when I let myself stop pretending.

You see, I’d been carrying things for months—questions without answers, small resentments I couldn’t name, that ache you get when you laugh too hard with people who don’t know the real version of you. I’d been trying so hard to keep it all together, to maintain the image of someone who was fine, who was thriving. But something about that storm cracked through the performance. It didn’t ask for permission. It just arrived, unapologetically wild.

I sat on the floor beside the window, knees pulled to my chest, and watched as the gutters overflowed, leaves swirled in chaotic spirals, and the city bent beneath the weight of water. For the first time in a long while, I didn’t try to fix anything. I didn’t scroll or plan or reach out to someone to fill the silence. I just let it all happen.

That storm reminded me that not everything broken is a problem to be solved. Some things need to fall apart. Some truths need space to echo before we can understand them. And sometimes, the most honest conversations we have are the ones we hold quietly with ourselves, while the rest of the world is too wet and wild to care.

By the time the rain slowed to a drizzle, the sky still hung heavy but brighter. A few children came out to play, their feet splashing in puddles like the world had been reset. I envied their ease—their instinct to find joy right after chaos. I promised myself I’d try to do the same.

It’s been weeks since that storm, but I still think about it. Not for its violence, but for its honesty. In a world that often demands we smile through everything, that rain gave me permission to feel without filtering. To fall apart, even briefly, and to know I could rebuild something softer, truer in its place.

Sometimes, it really does take a storm to wash things clean.