A Wall of Rain

A year ago today, through an ear-splitting roar of thunder, Joanie blew out twenty-four pink candles nestled in a red velvet cake with off-white cream cheese frosting. The same cake she had eaten for the previous twenty-three years, at the same table she had eaten every slice at, in the same house she always celebrated in. As she used every bit of air in her lungs to extinguish the mini bonfire, she defied tradition by not making a wish. Instead, she made an internal declaration. 

If things didn’t change in a year, I’m going to do something dramatic. 

Today, Joanie woke up at four in the morning from a dream she couldn’t remember to the sound of rain belting against her window. The bedroom she had lived in for years felt smaller than ever before. Shadows in every corner made up pieces of her life she couldn’t stand, reminders that she had yet to overcome the obstacle of stagnation that had kept her exactly where she had been for the past twelve months. The rain was outside, yet she felt like it was being dumped on her, an assault so heavy that it was drowning her. It was four-thirty in the morning when she decided to stay true to the promise she made a year ago, and snuck out of the house. 

By the time this year’s red velvet cake was baked and frosted, Joanie was six hours away, on an island she spent several summers on throughout her childhood. It was the only place that the pain in her life never followed. Time always seemed to freeze here. No school, no work, no responsibilities. The island was the only place she has ever felt peace in her twenty-five long years of life. Unfortunately, throughout the long drive toward her peace, the storm that woke her in the morning seemed to chase her as if it knew where she was headed. She tried not to be bothered by it, however dark the clouds in the distance seem. 

When she drove onto the ferry, she’d had this hope that peace would find her today, that it would all become less of a burden, that she could just breathe in the salted air from her childhood and find a new perspective. She ate at her favorite restaurant, walked around the unchanged village, sat on the beach for hours in solitude. The whole day, she searched desperately for some serenity. Any feeling that wasn’t painful numbness. It never came. Thunder clapped foreboding throughout the whole day like a warning. A yell from the heavens getting louder and louder as it drew nearer. Your peace isn’t coming. 

The storm was almost directly overhead when Joanie discovered there was no vacancy at the motel and the ferries weren’t running anymore. She asked the receptionist at the desk what she should do, the woman merely shrugged and apologized for the predicament she found herself in. Instead of panicking, Joanie accepted it. She’d been asking for something like this from the moment she blew out those candles. She would just lean into the situation.

Her phone was full of notifications. They started out early in the day as happy birthdays and well wishes but grew increasingly worried as nobody managed to get ahold of her. She had long since put the thing on silence and shoved down the guilt of not telling her parents where she was. The phone had sat useless in her pocket all day, so when she parked the car back in front of the restaurant, she tossed it into her passenger seat to leave behind.

The clouds blanketing the sky were nearly black and stretched out for miles and miles, no sign of blue to be found. Wind whipped around, knotting her hair and filling it with salt and sand. She sucked in a breath so deep that it made her chest ache, and she relished the scent of petrichor and ocean water. Tourists were rushing in their golf carts to get to their rentals before the sky opened up. Joanie locked her car and started to walk.

It took twenty long minutes to get to the other end of the village. The sun disappeared completely in that time. Thunder continued its bellow over the ocean. Joanie was accepting it all. The storm had chased her all the way from last year’s birthday, and now she was going to walk headfirst into it. If she could go forever, she would try to manage a way to walk right into the clouds.

However, her journey had limitations. If not the sky couldn’t be her destination, she had a decent one in mind to ride out the storm alone.

When she reached the long wooden path that extended into a lookout over the ocean, she was almost hit by a golf cart. Coming out of seemingly nowhere, it jerked to avoid her and came to an abrupt halt. For a swift moment, Joanie actually felt fear. It shocked her back down to earth and almost made her turn around to go back to the car. But then the driver let out a swear, and her head shot right back up into the dark clouds.

“Ma’am, you don’t want to be out here. Nasty storm about to hit,” he called, not truly able to meet her eye through the dark. She blinked toward his headlights, trying to think of something to say. Part of he wanted to point out that it was quite obvious that a storm was coming, and that she wouldn’t be out here if she didn’t want to be in it. Part of her didn’t want to say anything at all.

“I’m celebrating my birthday,” was her eventual quiet response, which made sense to her but elicited a confused reply she didn’t quite catch through a loud clap of thunder. Ignoring the man and taking the thunder as her queue, she moved around the cart and approached the path. It was somewhat surprising that he didn’t try to stop her, but she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t do the same thing if she were in his shoes. She must’ve seemed out of her mind.

It took two minutes to reach the lookout. Joanie spent them counting the seconds rather than thinking. When she reached it, she found herself looking out at the end of the world. The dark clouds above her head hadn’t yet opened up, but the ones before her were dumping rain down onto the ocean in sheets so thick that it looked like a massive gray wall. Lightning illuminated the world one bolt after another but the ocean still looked like it ended with a wall so high she would have to reach space to climb over. 

It was fitting. She felt like she hit a wall in life. Nature was just manifesting a visual.

Wind started to carry ocean spray toward her, rain began to pelt her body, thunder grew louder. Joanie stood looking out at the end and soaked it all in.

This was dramatic. 

This was something dangerous and filled to the brim with feelings only she could feel. If her life were a movie, this would be the scene where she fell to her knees and asked God or the universe why me? Why this life?

However, her life was far too boring to be a movie. And she would rather stare out into the sea of darkness than cry and pray. 

This was only for her. There was nobody in her life who could share this feeling with her. Nobody who would understand her appreciation for the magnitude of nature or how, despite being totally and completely alone, the energy of the storm felt like it could wash away the loneliness if she just stayed long enough. 

Water was coming down so hard that she was beginning to struggle to breathe. Despite being soaked, she was unbelievably hot. As lightning struck and thunder immediately proceeded to interrupt the deafening sound of rain beating against the violent waves, her ears began to ring. It was all so intoxicating. A dramatic deviation from her life.

A year had gone by with no changes. Same meaningless job that killed a piece of her every time she clocked in. Same bedroom in the house she grew up in, in the town she was born in. Friends and family that loved her, truly, but could not see her in the way she craved to be seen. At some point in the past year, she had shut off and accepted it all as her fate. She had known the whole time that out there, past the wall of rain, was a life she could not reach, so she stopped trying.

There was person she could love, who could see her with vision so clear that she had to redefine what she knew about herself. But he lived too far away to see her now.

There was a career out there that actually meant something, that made her feel like she was worth the space she took up. But she was stuck where she was, needing money more than passion.

There was a place far away that she could actually feel comfortable in, that wouldn’t steal the air from her lungs or box her in. But she didn’t know how to find it.

There was a family out there waiting for her to start it, but the world was so terrifying and full of misery.

And this wall in front of her seemed insurmountable. She was trapped with nowhere to go. No ferry to take her backward, no calm waters to sail forward.

With a gasp, Joanie sat right down on the water soaked wood so forcefully that she felt a quick shock of pain in her tailbone. She breathed in and choked on rain sliding into her windpipe. She stared out at the rain meeting the water and felt no fear as a bolt of lightning struck the cluster of rocks sticking out about half of a mile out. For a second, everything went white and the air around her charged with electricity. If it wasn’t being weighed down by rain, her hair would probably be sticking up. No matter how much water got into them, she kept her eyes open and staring out, taking it all in.

She would stay here tonight. Let the storm wash her away or strike her down. If she woke in the morning, she would get up, drive home, apologize to her parents, blow out twenty-five belated birthday candles, then pack her bags and go. If lightning struck her before that, she would be content knowing that at least something chose her. That nature made a decision she couldn’t. At least the sky could see her. 

A faint tingling in her fingers pulled her eyes away from the inky ocean. She twisted the ring around her index finger, squeezed her eyes closed, and inhaled a tense electric breath. Happy birthday to me.

Later, on the way home, she couldn’t be certain if it was hope or fear that made her jump to her feet and begin sprinting away. Maybe in that instance, they were the same thing. Whatever it was, at some point between slipping and falling on the rain-slick asphalt and narrowly avoiding dropping her keys into a puddle, the sudden desperation to live made her come to a realization.

She just needed to drive right through the wall.