The Only Exception

Right: SUBLIME SOAKING: Returning back to Res after a refreshing rainstorm

On one very average Tuesday evening, I was cuddled up under a blanket, thinking how happy I was to be here, listening to the thunderstorm that poured down onto my window and feeling all very nostalgic about returning home in a couple of weeks.

I decided to watch a thrilling movie at this point and halfway through, while sitting alone in my dark and eerie room, my friend bursts in dripping wet with her hair matted flat to her face like something out of a bad horror movie. After overcoming my initial shock at the sight of this zombie-lookalike I regain my composure only to be convinced to take off my shoes, lose my inhibitions and join her to go puddle-jumping in the thunderstorm.

Now, usually I would decline such a request or fob my friend off with the excuse that we’d get sick or contract some exotic disease of sorts. But something, most likely a sort of end-of-year syndrome, made me forget to do that. So I kicked off my shoes, let down my hair and rain into the sheets of pouring rain.

And you know what?

It. Was. Awesome.

At this moment the only thing that really mattered was that I was with some of my best friends skipping around in puddles (whilst being strangely eyed out by the passer-bys in their cars) and that we were in a sublime moment of relived childhood pleasure as we laughed hysterically down the road.

It was perfect. My mind was free from the daily stress of lectures and the looming exams. I was so happy that I walked into my Activate meeting that night barefoot and soaking wet – something I thought I’d never do. The sane me would have thought, “how unprofessional”.

But this was not sane me, this new experience seemed to bring out a whole a new side of me. One that stressed less. One that didn’t care about what others thought. One that just lived for the moment.

I wish it would rain like that on me every day.

By: Tarryn Ross