It has been raining for almost a week now and will continue into next week. The pitter patter wakes me up at night sometimes, but I fall right back asleep because of the warmth and comfort surrounding me. The rain reminds me of another place, another time.

I think back to this time last year, and the one thing that brought all those days together was the cold, drenching, dreary rain that fell for days and weeks and seemed to never go away. I remember the hopeless rain that fell as I sat in Logan Airport, across from the America West checkin counter in Terminal B, leaning on his shoulder, with wet blurry eyes and tears that fell and fell and would not go away. I remember taking the empty T back, wanting to cry myself to sleep, only to be met with day after day of being holed up in the Whitehead Institute library studying 14 hours a day for two weeks straight for those dreadful quals. The rain kept falling outside, splashing against the windows, drenching me as I biked home late at night, drizzling as I went for coffee breaks around the corner, pitter pattering against the window waking me up at night.

Those rains brought with them a dark period that extended all the way into November/December, a period so full of helplessness, frustration, and tears about every facet of life for me. I think back to the calm before the storm last summer, the happy times filled with sunshine and warmth and love, but consistently interlaced with doubt and pain and denial. I see the logical progression of how things came to be the way that they did, how sunny days grew stormy then became clear again, how love became anger became respect became resentment became acceptance, and how frustrations became a giant knot of life became a problem to be solved became finally untied. I see; I accept, but I don’t fully understand, not even now.

And now, here I am, facing another season of rains, and I realize just how much has changed between these last two seasons. I am in a different place in my life, a completely different mindset, a different time, surrounded by different people who have touched and changed my life. I marvel at how much of a transition this year has been, how much pain and uncertainly came with it, but also how much I have learned about myself and have grown into a (hopefully) stronger person.

I wonder what this new year between the rains will bring me?