People often ask, what is your favorite season?

When you grew up in a tropical place where you only have sunny or rainy days, I bet they’ll choose summer and would say they hate the cold. You can’t be surprised to know that they like all four seasons – summer, spring, summer, and fall, as I do.

That is why it is difficult to choose only one of these four. But, if asked what season I hate the most, in the blink of an eye, I know the answer right away.

Let’s go back to the tropical place where we get 20+ typhoons every single year, and we only have sunny and rainy days — without hesitation, I would say that I hate the rainy days. No offense to farmers in drier places who need water for their crops. Rain gives me anxiety, and I guess no one likes that feeling.

When I started living in a landlocked place with much less rainfall than where I grew up, I met people who found calm and solace in the sound and smell of rain. With a smile on their face, they would ask me if I felt the same. My answer has always been a NO.

Plants love it. But I am far from being a plant.

I played in the rain as a kid, but as I grew up, I saw how it had been destroying our house and peace of mind — the reason you won’t find any rain sound in my playlist despite claiming it to put you in sleep.

For me, rain often meant strong winds trying to peel off the iron roof of our house, heavy downpour leaking and wetting our beds, and eventually, flooding damaging our things (notebooks, clothes, etc.).

Strong winds made my heart beat 180 times per minute as I heard the creek coming from the roof, indicating that our roof might get blown away. The continuous howling of the wind at night was our alarm clock with no cancel/stop button, waking up the whole family. Next thing I knew, we were all grabbing wires tied to the roof and its foundation and helping each other save our house for the next 3 to 5 hours until this typhoon passed by our town.

Heavy downpours of rain would mean that we must try to sleep with a bucket next to us to catch the water dripping from the roof, albeit not rest until the heaviest part of the rain had passed. We needed to check every minute if the rain was about to come into our house.

Then, there was the flooding. It meant we needed to lift things like our fridge, couch, television, etc., things we find important, so they would not be damaged by the flood. It also meant to expect snakes, toads, or crickets to swim inside the house to find shelter, which added to my anxiety during typhoons. Ugh.

I hate the rain.