Every year at about this time the weather goes a little bit haywire. It snows. We get torrential downpours. Everybody is afraid to go outside because there is just no telling what will happen–it’s entirely possible that on a two minute walk from the front door to the car you’ll be rained on, snowed on, hailed on and then dried off completely by a sudden burst of sunshine. This is the weather that makes the wetlands next to my apartment complex flood so much that the basketball court we have gets completely submerged and the trickle of a creek that runs behind my part of the property becomes something more akin to a moat–flinging ducks every which way until they give up and fly off.

This is also the weather that made me really miss Oregon when I was living away from it.

I had forgotten how much I love this weather and then last Thursday…well, I remembered.

For most of my life I’ve been the one to run outside when it rains instead of ducking for cover. I don’t care if I get soaked. I don’t care if I ruin my shoes. I love the feel of this weather–the wind and the rain and sometimes even the hail–all at once threatening to knock me over while also somehow keeping me upright. Somehow, though, over the last few years I had turned into one of those “pretty weather–glad I don’t have to be in it” people. Somehow (and I’m not blaming any one thing–a bunch of things probably contributed to this) I’d become someone who actively avoids this kind of weather.  I’d make my  (now ex) husband go to the store and run errands all in the name of my staying dry. I know! I’m annoyed by that version of me too! What a baby!

Last Thursday I woke up to the sound of rain pounding against my bedroom window. It was so loud that it had scared Poppy and sent her diving under the bed for cover. I sat there, all bundled up in my covers and thought “Pretty…good thing I don’t have…AW CRAP.”

Because I DID have to go out in it. My apartment was soda-less and blog readers, I simply cannot have a soda-less apartment. It is as unnatural as….something really really unnatural. But more.

So I took a deep breath, bundled up as best I could, told my iPhone to create one of those Genius Playlist things off of Wheatus’s Teenage Dirtbag and set off for Fred Meyer.

I was doused by the time I had taken one complete step out of the entry way to my apartment’s stairwell. But…it was weird. I wasn’t annoyed.

I trudged through the complex, stopped to check the mail and thought “hang on a minute…why am I not irritated? This weather is irritating! I should be really bothered right now!”  I paused and waited for the familiar “yuck, I want to go inside” feeling to come but… even after a little more waiting…it still didn’t.

A strange feeling started to take over as I walked down my street toward the store. I couldn’t quite place it. It was kind of familiar, but in that “I…..think? I know you? Maybe?” way. All I knew for sure was that I was not annoyed with the weather at all. Something was definitely happening though. The wind and the rain and the wet and the cold and the music were all kind of conglomerating together to form….something. Familiar. But not.

I was practically skipping by the time I got my soda home and for the first time in I don’t remember how long, coming in out of the rain felt….weird. All I wanted in the world at that moment was to go back outside.

So I did.

I shoved the soda in the fridge, wrung out my gloves and hat in the sink, put them back on and, while thinking “once more into the breach dear friends!” dashed back outside. I was so desperate to get back out there that I almost forgot to lock my front door behind me.

As I wandered around my neighborhood I kept my face tilted up to the rain. I listened to the music blasting its way through my earbuds and suddenly it hit me.

I was happy.

Like really really really happy.

That alien but almost familiar feeling I’d been trying to puzzle out while running to the store and back? That was joy. Pure joy. And that’s when I remembered. Like a flash I remembered and welcomed home yet another part of myself that had somehow gotten shoved aside over the last few years: I like the rain. I like being out in the rain. Wild and random and strong weather like this–it is part of my joy.

I was outside for, oh, an hour and a half or so and I realized “this is what furiously happy” feels like.

I’ve gone back outside for at least a few minutes every day and each time I do I remember: this. This is me.

It’s kind of nice.