warm rain

Okay, I'm ready to articulate.

What I really miss right now is warm rain.
Rain is one of those things that is symbolic of the renewal of all things internal and external, but it also has more. You physically feel it. In the same way a shower washes away dirt, rain is, for me, the cleanser of the soul...whatever that is.

I'm so frustrated today because the inevitable finally happened: I felt it break. I felt the hope I had snap into pieces. It's the thing I've been both trying desperately to avoid, and that which I've always known to be both unavoidable and necessary.
The fall downward has been, so far, slow. Maybe it was naivety, or maybe it was just more poisonous hope that made me think I could prevent this. The problem is, even if I delayed the final crash and the final breaks, it's no better sitting 100 feet from the bottom unable to go in either direction than it is to finally hit the bottom. At least at the bottom I can look around and find the best way up... or out.
I can philosophize the best way out all I want or I can sit here and feel bad for myself for finally getting here (I knew I was here because I get that queasy feeling--the paralyzing sense that everythinge's all gone awry and I am helpless to stop it). But what I need is not a philosophy on living and learning and picking myself up. I need a good, warm rain. I need to feel the death of the hope I once had wash away; I need to feel that there's room for the rebirth I so desperately need.

The problem is that it's the dead of winter.

I want to travel back to when I was 12 years old, sitting on the roof of a car under a blanket in the rain...hearing that one day life was going to catch up to me. I laughed off the idea of struggling through choices and schools and broken hearts...
But here I am; Life caught up with me...and there's no rain to wash it all away.
When my previous hopes have been again and again shattered, how can I begin again to do so?
So I will say a few things about hope.
Hope...
James Peirce, a pragmatist, had a few things to say about this interesting phenomenon:
"Most of us, for example, are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is to continually counteract our hopes and aspirations...Where hope is unchecked by experience, it is likely that our optimism is extravagant. " From "The Fixation of Belief"
He does, however, go on to say that if natural selection has allowed this to continue, and if we are unique in this strange, illogical way of thinking, then there must be some advantage in the resulting behaviors...
So with me, being who I am, logical in every sense of the word, how do I move past this road block of experience and lack of success in order to hope once again?
I certainly can't go on blind faith, and hope for rain, today, even though that's what I feel as though I need. I have to begin with something grounded--something for which there is sufficient evidence.
Hoping for miracles is not something I'm inclined to do; for now I'm going to hope for the ordinary: for a good laugh, a hot cup of tea, an unexpected smile, a good time tonight... and hope that when I fall I'm going to find the strength to deal with it alone, or the confidence to ask for help when it's needed.

Maybe the reason I want the rain so badly is because I know that eventually a storm will stop.
A good, warm rain may be out of the question... but I'll find a way to cleanse sooner or later.
Experience tells me I'll find a way.

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life."
-John Updike, RIP