rain, rain, don't go away.
Oct. 24th, 2021 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yumenonakaeokay, over half the bay area is under a flash flood warning right now, and everyone forgot how to drive overnight, but i stand by my opinion. even if the rain isn't doing much to gear me up for the incoming work week.
i'm almost certain we got a lot more rain when i was younger. i can remember many school days where recess and lunch were spent in the classroom, and many days inside at home coloring felt lisa frank posters, or playing with polly pockets or lincoln logs or pokemon monopoly. i also remember, very vividly, many saturday evenings being dropped off at the church for choir, getting pelted by rain for half the trek from the car to the annex because i could never get my umbrella open in time, spacing out for the entire homily and listening to the deluge fall against the stained glass windows that looked out to nothing but the darkness of winter's evening. i remember rain on the upstairs window by the computer while i played neopets and coded myspace layouts and had to clear the screen whenever my parents' bedroom door opened behind me. rain after school while i waited for my ride and bitched to my best friends about sophomore guys, rain while nick and i filled out honors french iii homework right before class; rain on the way back from sac, when he was being cared for out there, and i sat in the front seat of the vanpool while ryan drove, staring out at the dulled, flat fields and the gray expanse of sky. and then rain again a few months later, in june, on the grass at the waterfront, all of us volunteers woefully unprepared in our blue jeans and vans. afterwards, instead of us all going home to dry off, the event coordinators treated us to dinner, and we all went straight to the fancy italian restaurant in our wet socks and pants, a bunch of rain-drenched seventeen-year olds with no table manners. looking back i'm surprised none of us got sick from it, and come to think of it, it's never rained that week of june since. huh.
now, rain is a treat. it's such a widely-anticipated thing these days, probably just because of how rare a system actually lands here, and half the time it's underwhelming, buffered too much by the anticipation. even the storm that's here now is only supposed to last until tomorrow morning, and then it's back to your regularly-scheduled sunny california skies. and who knows when the next one will be
after work on friday i went to a happy hour at the bierhaus. it was the first one i'd gone to since before the pandemic (rain then, too, i remember, just beyond the edge of the patio, all of us safely covered underneath; i opted for a root beer that day, none of my usual friends came, and jackie brought his mom) and it was also the most socializing i've done since before the pandemic. i had a lot of anxiety beforehand, but i ended up meeting a lot of the new kids and getting along well enough that we all exchanged numbers at the end of the night. lots of bonding over growing up queer in a small town and still using tumblr in 2021. i drove home feeling content, riding on that new-friend high, but woke up the next morning with a nagging thought that i must have been the most annoying person at the table. my mind defaults to that all the time and i'm not sure why, and i'm not sure how to make it stop without having to ask my friends "do you still like me?" every few hours
yesterday, my cousin came over to hang out and spend the night. we've been close all our lives, but in adulthood mostly drifted just due to clashing schedules and time passing more quickly than we can sit down and make proper plans together. we got back in regular touch at the end of last year, when my dad was in the hospital and going through the rough-and-tumble of recovery once he returned home, and, since her dad had been going through health issues of his own for several years at that point, we were able to confide in each other about the unwelcome welcome-to-adulthood shit like that. her dad died in the spring of this year, and since then we've seen each other at least once a month; as it goes, the best thing to come out of the worst situations like that is being forced to acknowledge how little time you actually spend with the people you love.
so she came over and along with my roommate we hotboxed my car, and it occurred to the both of us that we hadn't properly smoked together in nearly ten years. it made me feel young, that familiar buzz of youth where you feel the vastness of your twenties ahead of you, but it also made me feel sad for all the years that have already passed where we weren't seeing each other, or getting high together, or confiding in each other the trivial day-to-day things that turned out to be nontrivial now that we look back on them. instead there's nothing much to look back on, only the last time nearly ten years ago and, in between, family parties here and there where we both could actually make it. and then i realized that being sad was harshing my buzz so i tucked it away and decided to be grateful that, even though it took such a sad and life-altering event, we could be close again, and see each other every month, and watch workaholics while high together and laugh but also acknowledge how badly it aged.
then we slept in this morning, and when the power went out we slept until it came back on. then we laid in bed and facetimed my sister and talked about thanksgiving and christmas and it was like we were teenagers again. a good way to spend a saturday night, a good way to spend a sunday morning.
she left after breakfast, and then the sunday scaries settled in. i thought the rain might help, but i think the gloom of it has only contributed to my mood. but nevertheless. rain makes the flowers grow and keeps the fires at bay, so in the meantime, i just need to wait
i'm almost certain we got a lot more rain when i was younger. i can remember many school days where recess and lunch were spent in the classroom, and many days inside at home coloring felt lisa frank posters, or playing with polly pockets or lincoln logs or pokemon monopoly. i also remember, very vividly, many saturday evenings being dropped off at the church for choir, getting pelted by rain for half the trek from the car to the annex because i could never get my umbrella open in time, spacing out for the entire homily and listening to the deluge fall against the stained glass windows that looked out to nothing but the darkness of winter's evening. i remember rain on the upstairs window by the computer while i played neopets and coded myspace layouts and had to clear the screen whenever my parents' bedroom door opened behind me. rain after school while i waited for my ride and bitched to my best friends about sophomore guys, rain while nick and i filled out honors french iii homework right before class; rain on the way back from sac, when he was being cared for out there, and i sat in the front seat of the vanpool while ryan drove, staring out at the dulled, flat fields and the gray expanse of sky. and then rain again a few months later, in june, on the grass at the waterfront, all of us volunteers woefully unprepared in our blue jeans and vans. afterwards, instead of us all going home to dry off, the event coordinators treated us to dinner, and we all went straight to the fancy italian restaurant in our wet socks and pants, a bunch of rain-drenched seventeen-year olds with no table manners. looking back i'm surprised none of us got sick from it, and come to think of it, it's never rained that week of june since. huh.
now, rain is a treat. it's such a widely-anticipated thing these days, probably just because of how rare a system actually lands here, and half the time it's underwhelming, buffered too much by the anticipation. even the storm that's here now is only supposed to last until tomorrow morning, and then it's back to your regularly-scheduled sunny california skies. and who knows when the next one will be
after work on friday i went to a happy hour at the bierhaus. it was the first one i'd gone to since before the pandemic (rain then, too, i remember, just beyond the edge of the patio, all of us safely covered underneath; i opted for a root beer that day, none of my usual friends came, and jackie brought his mom) and it was also the most socializing i've done since before the pandemic. i had a lot of anxiety beforehand, but i ended up meeting a lot of the new kids and getting along well enough that we all exchanged numbers at the end of the night. lots of bonding over growing up queer in a small town and still using tumblr in 2021. i drove home feeling content, riding on that new-friend high, but woke up the next morning with a nagging thought that i must have been the most annoying person at the table. my mind defaults to that all the time and i'm not sure why, and i'm not sure how to make it stop without having to ask my friends "do you still like me?" every few hours
yesterday, my cousin came over to hang out and spend the night. we've been close all our lives, but in adulthood mostly drifted just due to clashing schedules and time passing more quickly than we can sit down and make proper plans together. we got back in regular touch at the end of last year, when my dad was in the hospital and going through the rough-and-tumble of recovery once he returned home, and, since her dad had been going through health issues of his own for several years at that point, we were able to confide in each other about the unwelcome welcome-to-adulthood shit like that. her dad died in the spring of this year, and since then we've seen each other at least once a month; as it goes, the best thing to come out of the worst situations like that is being forced to acknowledge how little time you actually spend with the people you love.
so she came over and along with my roommate we hotboxed my car, and it occurred to the both of us that we hadn't properly smoked together in nearly ten years. it made me feel young, that familiar buzz of youth where you feel the vastness of your twenties ahead of you, but it also made me feel sad for all the years that have already passed where we weren't seeing each other, or getting high together, or confiding in each other the trivial day-to-day things that turned out to be nontrivial now that we look back on them. instead there's nothing much to look back on, only the last time nearly ten years ago and, in between, family parties here and there where we both could actually make it. and then i realized that being sad was harshing my buzz so i tucked it away and decided to be grateful that, even though it took such a sad and life-altering event, we could be close again, and see each other every month, and watch workaholics while high together and laugh but also acknowledge how badly it aged.
then we slept in this morning, and when the power went out we slept until it came back on. then we laid in bed and facetimed my sister and talked about thanksgiving and christmas and it was like we were teenagers again. a good way to spend a saturday night, a good way to spend a sunday morning.
she left after breakfast, and then the sunday scaries settled in. i thought the rain might help, but i think the gloom of it has only contributed to my mood. but nevertheless. rain makes the flowers grow and keeps the fires at bay, so in the meantime, i just need to wait
