With rain chasing her at her heels and her fear of rain flowing through her veins, Nora is in a downward spiral mentally and trying to grasp onto anything that will stop her. For many years she has been trying to come to grips with her parent’s death in a car crash and a voice that she incessantly hears in her head that announces only evil.
She lives amongst a testosterone filled family; Pops, her uncles and cousins that have never wavered in their love but are often overshadowed by the darkness that overwhelms her.
With the loss of a friendship, running into the man that killed her parents, and her family confronting her about her issues, all with the sound of the voice echoing throughout, she is brought to the edge of insanity and to her breaking point. Will she win the battle in her mind or will she succumb to defeat?
I feel like raindrops have been following me my whole life. Slowly dripping, tiptoeing behind me in my shadow and at other times chasing me at a downpour, drenching me as I try and dodge the wet droplets. The rain has been incorporated in my life during times when life-changing events have happened and enclosed in my dreams; frightening me out of my sleep.
Ever since I was a little girl, I have hated the rain. Besides, the physical pains of it all; the headaches from the pressure in the air and my bones aching, there are also the mental issues. Yes, I have plenty of them. Anxiety fills my veins as the rain begins and doesn’t leave until the clouds part and the sun shines brightly. Sometimes, I catch it too late and that is when depression kicks in. There is something about the dreariness of the weather that sets me on a whirlwind mentally. With my shoulders slouched, my mind is dark and I feel incapable of living. The weather infuses itself into my mind and makes it heavy. The weight makes me sag and hang deep below my normal surface and I tend to become stagnant, unwilling to move until I am strong enough to push, yank and tear my way out of it. Not all the time though, just the times where I don’t catch myself before I fall down those slopes.
I typically won’t leave the house or wherever I am when the showers start and I plead to anyone that will listen to stay put until it ends. An unsettled feeling builds within my heart and I’m afraid that something bad will happen; scared someone will get hurt. There are people who understand and then there are some people who say, to my surprise, that I have issues. I could have told them that.
In the small chance that I succumb to the constant whine of others and leave the house while it rains, I carry one of my umbrellas. I have red ones, blues ones, striped ones and polka dots. I have a lots, like my frog one, from when I was a little girl and now that I’m almost 20, I choose to only break those out when I want to embarrass the person I will be standing next to.
I was always swept away in some story that was floating around and evolving in my mind, but, besides for a
few times, hesitated putting them down on paper due to the fact I worried what others thought. Those stories and screenplays that were written down when I was younger were secretly hidden from everyone’s eyes. After 30 years, I convinced myself that the opinions of others no longer mattered and it was all about how I felt writing. The creative process can be my nemesis at times, but when it feels right, it is the love of my life.
I am the author of WHEN IT RAINS: THE UMBRELLA COLLECTION and BACK INTO THE SUNSHINE.
I am currently residing in Philadelphia, Pa, but who knows where I’ll be this time next year.
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