Listening to Rain Alone and Healing

Right now, in a darkened apartment, the rain is unending. I’m alone. It’s the top floor. Rain strikes the windows with that sound. The sound of cleansing. Gifting. Comforting. Enveloping. Persistence. Never ending. The sound that suggests, at least for me, your love, Lord. That sound surrounds this moment. I’ll recall it again tomorrow when its remnants are pools of water that convey the presence, Lord, of your gift.

Right now, in the dark, with the rain’s sound ever present, I’m healing.

Choosing the opposite of what I’d always do is, in this moment, the rightest answer that I could ever have pursued. I tore myself from the negative roots of life and went where I’m alone. Unfamiliar. Fresh to experience newness. Devoid of physical triggers. Subject only to the mental triggers clinging to me through anxieties and past traumas. Open to observation. First-time experiences at the ready. Abounding opportunities to encounter and experience things anew before they become the familiar routine. Right now, I finally understand those who continually seek the new. To always experience first times. To constantly open themselves to surprise. And learning.

Shedding life’s traumas is new for me.

I’ve pulled trauma so close for so long that it’s been falsely familiar and comforting. Comforting because it’s known. Known, even while it’s been killing the love within and around me. Killing my spirit. Killing aspirations for doing much beyond getting along and existing.

Right now, in my darkened apartment, trauma isn’t just mental, an experience to remember. It’s physical. Physical inside me. A drug to numb and soothe and terrorize. Physical in things. Things that silently witnessed and imprinted as the visual images woven into the fiber of the damage that I’m NOW stripping away. Stripping away and tossing like the boxes and packing materials that transported me to this new place.

Alone, and in the dark. Reflecting. Listening to the rain. Watching the rain stick to the windows. And the far-off sirens that appear, disappear, and reappear. They are the memories that flash and vanish and then jump out again even in this new place. Those memories I will throw out because I don’t want them here.

Right now, I’m experiencing what’s mine. The love of God. The love of amazing people who care so much about me. And the hope and potential that may not seem enough. That may seem damaged. But the hopes are mine. The potential is mine. I am free to shape and grow them into doing what I’m supposed to be doing for whatever time that I have left.

I’m me. And I’m healing.

If you have faced abuse in a relationship, it’s not okay. Seek help. I’m publishing content along my journey to healing. Subscribe to get an email whenever I share a new article.