Raining Apathy: Right After College

The sound of the incessant rain is not so wearisome. It really is a rhythmic and almost beautiful sound…one that could lull me to sleep or send me into a trance. It is the lack of color in the world—the bleak gray and cold that envelops the world as a result of the rain. It will not stop. The sun is hiding and refuses to expose the blue sky that greets one so cheerily and early in the summer mornings. But this bleak weather is timely. This constant downpour makes sense right now. It reminds me of that fact that I am tired and bored. That I want to hide and not be interesting or inviting or expressive. It came at a time of my “in between”. The eschatology of my transition period. I am no longer a college student, but I am not respected as an adult quite yet. I am only twenty five, but, oh man, I am twenty five! What have I to show for myself? I am deep in debt from my scholastic endeavors and as I pay that off by working with babies my intellectual edge feels like it is quickly disappearing. It is all being washed away by the ever present rain. Sure, the rain is necessary. It cleans, it waters, it is the stuff of life, but being in the rainy season is as painful as actual growing pains. You do not observe growth, all you do is feel pain. You are reminded of the drudgery that life can hold. Some people love the rain. They talk about the layering of their neutrally shaded clothes, they talk about the coffee shops, and the fire place, and the books they will read. I wonder what they are talking about, because I know few people in my generation that actually read… and who has a fire place? More likely they will hide away in their rooms and watch hours of shows and post on their social media pages about how much they love the miserable weather. Maybe it is not so miserable and maybe people actually do the reading and the fireplace staring that they say they do. Maybe it is only me that is miserable. Miserable because of the rain. Miserable because I cannot find contentedness in the mundane. I sit in hours of traffic each day and watch my windshield wipers try to push away the inevitable, while I listen to incompetent politicians say it isn’t even raining. I am miserable because I can use the rain as an excuse. I can use it as an excuse not to go outside because I live in a rainy culture that does not believe in umbrellas and I would not want to get wet. The rain is also an excuse not to exercise and the dark is another excuse not to get up early enough to accomplish anything before I go back to work. Work; where all that I do is clean a house that is not my own and take care of children that I did not birth. It is worth it for the money. You see, I need that money to pay off the debt that I accrued while pushing myself, too quickly, through an academic world that is fading from my mind. They sent me the single sheet of paper that reminds me of why I am going to work every day—or maybe it was to mock me from its perch on my bedside table. I am going there to pay for the things that I learned and am trying not to forget. I am miserable because the rain breeds apathy and I already struggle with not wanting to hold myself accountable for my own lack of motivation and negativity. I could never blame myself for these feelings that flood my body with exhaustion and my mind with apathy. No. I think I will blame the rain. I do not even like neutral colors, but that is all I can wear because that is all that this culture allows for. No umbrellas, no bright clothes…only rain. I never wanted to end up here. I swore that I wouldn’t. But here I am. Drenched and hiding. Wishing I was somewhere else. Not wanting the conviction that comes when Paul talks about being content in all circumstances. I want to be somewhere else. I want to be someone else. I want to be embraced by the warm sun each morning. I do not want the formidable cloud of debt hanging over me, even as the bible challenges me to be generous with what I have. I do not want to be washed or watered. I want to be grown. I want to be out of this “in between”. I want the rainy season to end.

Matthew Zwicker