Storms are not always sudden. They give off a warning in advance, a scent, like fire almost. Or perhaps not even a scent, merely a primal feeling, buzzing in the bones, you know rain, thunder, lightning, approach. It might start as a sense of unease, irritation. Suddenly everyone around you seem itchy, obnoxious. Then, slowly, energy seeps in, starting with a tingling in your toes, filling you up until even your hair feels as if it might crackle with unused electricity. The storm is inside of you, and the indoors, being around people, holds no appeal. You have to escape, find some sense of release. As the first raindrops fall, sparkling diamonds, soft and playful as they brush your face, the building panic, the need to release and escape, the pressure you'd been feeling evaporates. Pure joy fills you. You can't hold in the laughter, so you give up. You sing, laugh, dance, spin in the rain. As if in response to you voice, your movement, the winds whip around you. Whispering their secrets, tugging at your hair and clothes. The wind steals your laughter in gusts, so you laugh louder. The wind, in all it's stolen voices, laughs with you. Next, waves of energy sweep through you, the true storm has arrived. Thunder rumbles through the air, as much a feeling as a sound. A crack of bass, the deepest voice of the sky appears, adding into the cacophony of voices above you. The music of the wind joins the thunders' voice in dance and song. More and more energy weaves into every atom of your being as the rain sheets down. Everything is blurred as if behind warped glass. Nothing remains dry as water pours from the sky, seeping into the universe. The world appears vague, but vivid, green. Electricity smarts through the air, lifting the drenched hair on your head and arms as lightning flashes, again and again. Caught up in the music, the raw energy of the storm, you can think of nothing. You merely exist. you are purely in the moment as the entire storm seems to enter your very being. The kind of energy that feeds the deepest, truest, part of what defines you. After a while-- ten minutes, an hour? Time seems unimportant while living in a storm-- the winds die down, the rain stutters, turns to a soft mist, thunderclaps, clouds, and lightning travel away on their journey, leaving you behind. You are left with a pang of sorrow, an anguished feeling of abandonment, forgotten, and yet the storm has given you a gift too. A promise of energy locked away inside of you. An energy that will come again, surge its way into every part of your body with all the emotion of falling in love, the excitement, the joy, the intense, unforgettable, wild emotions that no name can truly bring justice to. Storms bring this to you, it is their gift. The ocean has the energy too. In its wildness, the raw power it holds. In that it is never the same, infinitely changing, and changing everything it touches. Storms and the sea, these places, these concepts have a special magic, a power, an energy that brings a response to you that is unbelievable. At least they do for me. Perhaps it is not the same for everyone, perhaps storms and oceans bring no change to most people, or perhaps it is not that they don't feel the power, but that it frightens them. The energy anyone could take into themselves. Fear blinds people to the truth of who they are, how powerful they could be if they accepted the wild energy nature gives those who can allow it. Not everyone responds to storms and seas as I do. For some, true contentment, true power, comes from the earth-- mountains, forests, caves, stones. For me though, water is my home. Where I feel most comfortable, where I have the most energy, the strongest emotions. The sea has been my friend since I was a child, I can never lose it. Storms too, have always thrilled me. They have never been something to fear. Storms are everything that frightens and inspires me, they are overwhelming, powerful, and generous. They sing melodies so ethereal they bring tears to my eyes as I laugh. Wild, beautiful, dangerous, they have no fear and yet are fear, they inspire me. Truly I believe nature has much to teach us, many gifts to bestow, yet so many people have hardened themselves to it. Told themselves stories-- nightmares, much like campfire tales of ghosts, and tales to frighten children into good behavior-- or distract themselves with the pretty baubles of human invention until they no longer see that the material cities they've immersed themselves in are nothing but filigree cages, keeping them from anything that might give true enjoyment or fulfillment. They individual must choose for themselves whether or not to accept the gifts the world can give. Perhaps too many have forgotten this, forgotten the natural world. Realization is the key to those people's cages because the cage is only their own mind. Perhaps, though, the mind is the strongest prison of all. That, however, is for you to decide. Your own personal choice to stay within the boundaries you yourself have set, or to push past them, discover the world you have been missing, discover the wild part of yourself that has slumbered, drugged into submission by the distractions you've provided. Your choice. To stay safe in your gilded cage, or enter the unknown. As for me, I've already made my choice. My life is with the storms, the oceans, the wild, abandon of my emotions. I have joy in this place. A joy given freely by nature that so many have left behind.