Let the rain wash away all the pain

With the wind blowing and the beautiful music permeating my ears, I know that I could have thrown my head back and smile at the momentary peace I feel - but for the fact that I was on a balcony and didn’t want to take my chances. For someone who doesn’t like the cold and would give everything up for a higher humidity, me wanting the cool air is rather ironic. My best guess is that it means something else. Maybe it’s the subconscious desire of wanting to let go or to let someone else take charge for a second while I rest from the inner battles.

As I sat in the foyer of law school and watched students rushing into the building to seek shelter from the rain, this sent me into dangerous territories. I’m not one who likes rain and I’m not sure if it’s related to my horoscope or it’s just me as a whole. That being said, I don’t hate it because I understand its importance to farmers and for the water reservoir. There wouldn’t be any continual supply of water without it.

I just wanted to retreat into my shell and quietly ride out the storm indoors. I still remember that episode in college. It was one of those gloomy days, but it suddenly rained like cats and dogs. We were all huddled on the 6th floor during the 3-hour downpour, either waiting for it to come to a stop or silently cursing at the rude interruption. I, on the other hand, was alone in the smaller room (where the management rented to an MMA trainer after-hours) and stared at the raindrops on the window with a takeaway cup of coffee in my hand.

Rain just makes me reflect on the mistakes and regrets of my life. It opened my eyes to something that I never knew I had in me, which is the ability to feel connected with the weather.

Elder Park/River Torrens

Adelaide Riverbank

I don’t remember feeling emotionally affected by rain before college. It was always the inconvenience that I felt during the thunderstorm because the lightning will trip the switchboard and you know what happens next. We have to wait until the end of the storm before we can deal with the switchboard. My discomfiture only started somewhere during my first semester of college - where I subconsciously associated all of the bad memories with the gloomy weather. It works like a switch; the minute the clouds make their presence known, it will make me sad for no apparent reason. I would hide under the cape of my hoodie and pray that no one notices my presence.

The Carrie version of Bak Kut Teh (肉骨茶)

I have no idea why I did what I did, but I made myself a large pot of bak kut teh (pork rib soup) and shared it with the two musketeers. I guess it gave us a good opportunity to touch base with the assignments and make sure that everyone is doing okay. Let’s just say that when the three of us hang out in a private corner, all the boundaries and inhibitions are thrown out of the window. We also have the tendency of branching into topics that we wouldn’t dare speak of us in public. There is the talk of travel, but knowing our divergent schedules, if we want to fly to an agreed place together, we’d have to start planning it the moment we graduate and find ourselves a job. Not to mention, anything can happen from now until the predictive date of travel.

Something in the aura changed and I found myself being painfully aware and reminded of what I lost. I should be suppressing the memories of that person and hope that it’ll fade away with time, but maybe that’s the reason why it’s resurfacing after being dormant for so many years. My subconscious wants to purge this out of its system before I move on to the next chapter of my life. Your jaw may slam to the floor with the revelation, but I guess by me still being able to experience the pain after all these years, it means that I’m still capable of emotions. I can’t help but wonder what will happen the moment I am unable to feel anything. No happiness. No sadness. No anger. Just a neutral lackadaisical attitude.

The perfectionist in me has started to overload her plate - again. With the addition of a mentoring program, I know that there wouldn’t be much time for me to take a breather but I know that I’m able to reap some benefits with the close, frequent contact with the mentor. I can’t complain as the real world is busier than this. A minimum 40 hour week with no guarantees that you’ll have the weekend to catch up with your own things. There are, sometimes, the requirement to stay back in the office to finish the paperwork or bring them home to deal with them and only sleeping late at night before repeating the cycle the next day. That’s just your average workplace. If you talk about the high-pressure ones like law and medicine, the hours spent on work is way more than you can imagine.

The weird dream that I had isn't helping with the situation either. I'll write more about the context in another post.