I Hate the Rain

Sitting down beside the fireplace, I place my coffee cup down on a coaster on a wooden table next to me. The rug's usual dark red is illuminated with a warm red glow, and the grey-blue walls dancing with shadows and light. The dark red curtains fall outward as if tripping on slippery slopes. The open shutters of the windows rattle against the wind, and yet there isn't any rain to fall through the screen. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed, adding even more depth to the once very cozy room.
I sat all myself in the corner, all cuddled up in blankets on the smooth furred sofa, with a book in hand, trying to ignore the shouts of my parents in the short distance. Lightning flashed again, pronouncing every little movement in the room and the objects against the suddenly electric blue walls. The dry storm continued to brew, loudly and yet you could so easily forget the storm was happening if it calmed down for a few moments. More shouts, much like the ones that haunt my dream-or should I say nightmares? Yes that's more accurate, they haunt my nightmares, day and night. Thunder booms, scary thoughts emerge once again, breaking through the clouds and into the atmosphere.
The book in my lap doesn't help, it instead brings me to a nonexistent sob. The calming sensation of my blankets has disappeared and I feel like I'm drowning, lost in a sea of restrained emotions I've never been able to show. I'm choking on the too thick air, air that should have felt refreshing but instead feels tight. But nothing, nothing could have prevented the shouts of frustration and hatred I have just heard-not even myself. Their distant yells echo through my head, bringing my tears that have been held back for so long into the depth of my eyes threatening to leak through. They yell, and they scream, and they fight, what happened to the love they shared?! What happened to the loud and clear proclamations of love and warmth?! Where have they gone?! When have those declarations become so ill intended, when have they become so full of hate that it stings and stabs for ages?! When?! When?! When...?
It's of no use now, my voice was lost in the oncoming storm's thunder long ago, I used to be the clouds holding their anger back, but soon I became nothing but a target for their hatred. Just another matter to argue over. And so with the words,
"I've already signed the damn papers! All I need is your signature and we won't ever have to see each other again!"

"Fine! Hand em' over! I can't wait until you're out of my way and we're legally divorced! "

The divorce planning has been going on for ages and now it is no longer just planning but a reality. As their voices echo off the walls, I become so lost in the shouts of thunder and flashes of lightning, my sobs echo through the corridor, leaving a flood of emotions in its wake. I hear the packing and clicks of suitcases, I hear my mother yelling at my father that she'll be at Sally's for a while. I hear my father shout that he doesn't want to see her face either. And just like that with the sound of the front door slamming shut like the sound of thunder, and the flash of lightning when I see my own haunted face in the mirror across from me, I feel the rain hitting my face. The storm has lost its restraint, and the rain falls through the screen, pelting everything with clear little drops of liquid. Just like the dark grey clouds above I fall apart at the seams, and I ask myself in broken sobs,

"When have I begun to hate the rain?"

I began to hate the rain the moment I lost everything to the wet and loud storm that always hung overhead. Now I'm left with the wreckage of a broken relationship, and I wish that I could go back in time to the moment when I basked in the gentleness of the rain and let it linger on my skin, but instead all I feel is a raw ache right where my heart used to be, filled with only the old remains of murky and sour rainwater left from a storm that has never truly ended.