I love the rain. And in turn, I love everything that comes of it. I love the pitter-patter sound knocking on my thin roof and glass windows. I love sucking in the misty air that congeals into water vapor as it penetrates my nose and lungs. I love having an excuse to stay inside, lying on the couch while reading and watching movies. I love drinking hot chocolate, my skin shivering as a warm sensation travels from my esophagus to my stomach.
I love it when the storm gets too chaotic, tearing down trees and rearranging the landscape. I love it when the lightning strikes too close for comfort, making my heartbeat rattle my ribcage and blood pulse through my eardrums violently for hours on end. I love it when the power goes out, and I am forced to bask in the darkness until SDGE deems electricity safe again.
I love leaving our house the day after a torrential downpour and seeing the gravel sidewalk bleeding onto the streets, leaving whiplike scars. I love the drama that comes from the aftermath, the complaints about my dad's handiwork. I love how a human's true nature becomes most apparent after a natural disaster, how they immediately point fingers, hoping to blame somebody for something nobody can control.
I love how an act of kindness can turn into a "deliberate negligence" in the face of panic, how they can misconstrue a simple, generous project into a targeted attack. I love how each minuscule rock that found its way onto their driveway was an added reason to blast my father on a neighborhood-wide email. I love how quickly endearment can turn into resentment and how blurred the lines between love and hate have become.
I love how news stations use our peril to boost their ratings, finding profit where victims starve for charity. I love how my pain is used to relieve boredom. I love how death and destruction become tools to push political narratives. I love how politicians flaunt their post-disaster "philanthropic" efforts as a means to cultivate their image as holier-than-thou. I love that after bolstering their image, officials rebuild atop the graves of those who suffered from their unpreparedness, using material identical to rice, brittle when dry and mushy when wet. I love how everything is forgotten, swept away in the river of time, after everybody loses interest in your suffering.
I love rain, but I hate humanity.