The Weather Inside Me

I used to think sadness was the opposite of happiness.

Like rain was the enemy of sunlight.

Like grief was the place where love went to die.

I was wrong.

One evening, I stood beneath a sky that couldn't decide what it wanted to be.

It was raining.

The sun was still there.

And somewhere between the two, a rainbow appeared.

I remember staring at it and thinking,

maybe this is what being alive means.

To hold contradictions without asking them to become simple.

To laugh with a heart that has known loss.

To love someone while knowing nothing stays forever.

To miss someone and still be grateful that they once existed.

To cry in the rain and somehow smile because the rain is touching your face.

Maybe grief is not the opposite of love.

Maybe grief is love after it has lost its place to go.

Maybe that's why sometimes I miss people who aren't here anymore and still feel warmth.

Because the heart doesn't understand absence the way the mind does.

The mind says,

"They're gone."

The heart says,

"Look, they're still everywhere."

In the song that suddenly reminds you of them.

In the smell of rain.

In an old photograph.

In the way you laugh exactly like they did.

In the moon you both once looked at.

In that one ridiculous memory that still makes you smile even when your eyes are wet.

Perhaps memories are little windows the dead leave behind.

And perhaps that's why I don't want to close them.

I want to look through.

Even if it hurts.

Especially if it hurts.

Because what is happiness without something to make it precious?

What is sunlight without knowing rain?

What is a rainbow without the storm that came before it?

And maybe we have misunderstood the storm altogether.

We keep asking,

"When will it end?"

But sometimes the storm isn't punishment.

Sometimes it is simply the sky releasing what it could no longer hold.

Maybe we are allowed to do the same.

Cry.

Break.

Be quiet.

Scream.

Disappear for a while.

Then breathe.

Then laugh.

Then love again.

Not because we forgot what happened,

but because we finally learned that pain doesn't get to own the whole story.

There will always be another morning.

Another rain.

Another ridiculous laugh that escapes us when we weren't expecting it.

Another person whose presence makes an ordinary evening feel almost sacred.

Another cup of tea.

Another song.

Another sky changing colour right in front of our eyes.

And perhaps that's the miracle.

Not that life becomes beautiful forever.

It doesn't.

Life becomes beautiful and terrible and tender and unbearable and hilarious and heartbreaking

sometimes all on the same day.

And somehow,

we keep living it.

We keep becoming.

We keep loving.

We keep looking up.

So if you ask me now where heaven is,

I don't know.

Maybe it is in the sunlight.

Maybe it is in the rain.

Maybe it is in the arms of someone we love.

Maybe it is in the ache of someone we can no longer hold.

Maybe heaven is not a destination at all.

Maybe it is this strange ability to stand in the middle of everything,

with tears in our eyes and sunlight on our skin,

and still whisper,

"Look."

"Isn't this beautiful?"

And somewhere above us,

the clouds keep moving.

The rain keeps falling.

The rainbow keeps fading.

The sun keeps returning.

And we,

with all our grief,

all our love,

all our broken pieces,

keep becoming

another kind of sky.