A short story by Heidi Dischler

It was the Storm raging into a crescendo. All the signs were there: the dark clouds, the increase in wind, the scent of rain. It was all there waiting to be found, to be discovered, so that someone could say, “Look! We need to protect ourselves,” but was it really themselves that they should have been protecting? 

The Storm hovered through, passing slowly to all who ended up in her path. She was a symphony of sorts, beautiful in her own destruction. Didn’t she know that the longer she stayed on land, the weaker she got? Didn’t she know that she was dying? Choking like the very air she breathed was being vacuumed out of her lungs? 

She should have been protected. She should have been loved and cherished and believed in. Someone should have said to the Storm that nothing could hurt her as much as she hurts herself. Someone should have said that all storms pass…. But could the Storm ever go back to the way she was before? Could she forget the things that others had done? The things that she had done?

She was like rainwater finally being released after years of drought. She poured through with all of her burdens, all of her pain, and finally released it. 

She was the Storm raging into a crescendo. 

It hadn’t always been like this. She had been happy once. She had been naïve, ignorant, stupid to the way that the world worked. She had been innocent, but all clean things end up with stains. 

Her head and her heart told her different stories. They confused her to the point where she was anxious in everything that she did. She breathed in air, but the storm raging around her slapped the air from her lungs. The storm she created. She wouldn’t let herself breathe. It was as if her own body was working against her, anxiety crushing her lungs. They always felt full like they were filled with the very rainwater that she held inside. Crushing her. Consuming her. Controlling her.

Complete pandemonium.

She was the Storm.

She was the Storm inside herself. She held her emotions in, she kept them to herself, and they eventually got to the point where they consumed her very being. She was anxious. She was in pain. She was alone, but she wasn’t sure how to get back to safety. 

She was the Storm and the Storm controlled her life. 

The Storm was her.