My voice may very well be failing me, just when I thought I was on to something. I'm trying, and I don't think it matters, because in the end, trying might not lead to anything at all, and I will be miserable still. Somebody help me find my feet. I am not good enough on my own, not yet, I hope not for long.

All the Wounded Ones Home

© Rachel C

The clouds are lying low on one side of the house; low, gray, foreboding rain, and thunder in the distance. But on the other side, streaming in through the blind-covered windows, sun streaks the living room floor. Where is the sun coming from, where are the clouds going, are they traveling together? The sun fades, then brightens, fades, the lights the floor again. The clouds are winning the back and forth battle, or the sun is standing strong. I am watching it play out on the living room floor: bright sunshine, dark clouds, shiny light, twisted shapes. Back and forth, back and forth...I feel so back and forth, pulled and pushed, and prodded and poked toward every direction. The clouds are being shaped by the wind, pushing them farther away, molding them into greater, bolder masses, darkening the sky, creating thunder. The sun is victim to the spinning of the Earth. She’ll sink, they’ll blow away, she’ll rise, they’ll build with evaporation, with accumulation of everything she’s created. And I have no doubt that I will sit here, sit here and watch it play out on the living room carpet.
The clouds have overtaken the sky. I suppose, if just for a moment, I can let my emotions settle.

April 3, 2007
Author's Note: I don't think I have anything to say...I think I am slumping, I think I need some work.

Diving Deeper into Something Good

Each Coming Night

© Rachel C

I am up and down, like the weather. One moment something makes me angry, the next moment I’ve found a reason to smile again. I am up and down, side to side, back and forth—but mostly up and down. The weather never compliments me. If it rains, I want to smile. The low, gray clouds make me happy. And I love the sound of raindrops on the windshield. When it’s bright, and the sky is blue, I am mellow. Light-hearted, easy going, I am indifferent. But when it is warm I feel lonely, as if there is an element missing—there is: my coat. I would rather curl up with my fleece; walk through chilled air just to see my breath. The cold is comfortable. And living here, I wake up without knowing how I’ll feel that day. Tomorrow, I won’t know if it will be raining or hot. And I don’t know if I will be up to a drop in the temperature. I don’t know if I’ll be prepared to smile again.
At some point in my early youth I was traumatized. I was stuck in a small, one-story house in—let’s face it—bumblefuck Glenpool, Oklahoma, curled next to my mother as a Gust Nato passed over, ripping away privacy fences, pulling branches from their trees, sweeping shingles from defenseless, bare-bottomed roofs. I was tiny, I was terrified, and all I can recall is the sound of my mother’s voice hurrying along a prayer. I don’t think I have ever been the same.
When we moved into this house, we only had the laundry room bathroom to hide in—which, if there had ever been a true threat, we would have all been demolished in that tiny space—and I took to it with speed each time Travis Meyer declared a tornado watch. If you haven’t been in Tornado Alley, or spent your life in the world’s twister capital, then you might not know, as I didn’t, that a watch was nothing, meaningless, a precaution. And yet I flew to the bathroom, kneeled on the floor between the cabinets and the toilet, and prayed to Jesus to save my family from any danger. “Please don’t let us die.” I would grow nervous to the point of stomach aches when harmless thunderstorms would pass over; I would whimper, rush to my mother, sometimes even cry from anxiety. Tornadoes stressed me out; I was a nervous wreck at six.
As I grew older, I began to note the differences in tornadic storms and simple, easy, beautiful thunder. I grew to enjoy the latter, still petrified of the former. When my father left, and my sister was away at her first year of college, a storm of the former came sweeping in, as they do every spring, and I found myself in the closet under the stairs sobbing and praying to a god I was losing belief in. It’s almost ironic that I found myself on my knees in a closet that only came into existence because of my father’s angry fist and the brittle nature of sheetrock. There I was, crying for my mother to console me, on the floor of an accident of anger. And my mother, she soothed me by telling me we were alright, that we survived the worst without my father, that we would survive this. She didn’t know I was sobbing for my sister, I didn’t know she wasn’t referring to the storm.
Just this past year, the sirens sounded in downtown Chicago. My friend freaked out, ran downstairs from the fifteenth floor, and hid in the basement with the other tenants in her building. Unlike her, I sat in my room, opened my window, and listened to the rain. “This isn’t tornadic; there is nothing to worry about.” She told me things were different here, that I could be wrong. I wasn’t wrong, I was experienced, I knew better. And yet part of me is nervous, each time it begins to thunder late at night, each time the sound of pounding rain wakes me up from much-needed slumber. My stomach turns a little, I feel the twinge of anxiety in my gut, but I force myself to roll-over; I convince myself I know better, I tell myself someone is looking out for me even though I know they aren’t—everyone is sleeping, just as I should be. But a part of me won’t fall back asleep, even if my body does, even if my mind does. I dream of mysterious things that leave me feeling lonely in the morning, and leave my skin tingling with the moments I remember of creepy scenes. My deep seeded anxiety manifests itself in my subconscious expression, and I wake up awkward, I wake up anxious; I wake up only to find I am not really awake.
It’s spring; the weather is up and down, cold one day, humid the next. I wake up without knowing how the weather’s changed overnight; I am not able to tell how I will feel when I walk outside. Maybe one of these days there will be a tornado and I won’t have to decide how to feel based on the weather. I will just walk through the day with mixed emotions spinning all around my head.

April 2, 2007
Author's Note: GAH, I fucking hate having to conform in my comp class to simplistic, 750 word, five-paragraph essay bullshit, and it is showing in my most natural of forms. Fucking hate it, fucking hate how this feels, but I also know that I have to write, and I want to write, and these things truly are up and down. Yeah, so it sounds like a two-dollar essay, but it's all part of something greater--all part of some giant, grand machine. I can only hope that the whole meaning wasn't ruined by my feeling of strain, even when I am writing for nobody but myself. It's so strange how these things affect you. Please, pray I come out of this stupor quickly. I cannot stand to let myself fall into this high school style slump. I need my voice back.