Storm

I've struggled to come up with an idea for the word storm. I've thought about how much I love watching storms. Waiting in anticipation. The build up of omnious clouds, the wind growing stronger, the smell of the rain on its way. The feel of electricity in the air. Wind and sheets of rain blasting leaves and hair wildly. Thunder and lightning jostling for attention. I've watched the emormous Eucalypt trees in the bush behind my house bend to breaking point. The branches flexible like rubber bands ready to snap. How can something so strong and solid and rooted in the earth be so destorted by an invisible power?
I thought about taking a photo of a storm. Although there hasn't been a good storm for a while now. Or a photo of storming emotions. The pure rage of my children. Here one moment destroying everything in their path. Yet gone in the next instant, laughing with tears still drying on their cheeks.
I thought about drawing or painting a storm. Wildly throwing colours, playing out a storm on paper. Reds and blues swirling like the wind.
 But I couldn't bring it out of me. It wasn't there. The way I see a storm. All rage and destruction, explosion and power. I can't feel that kind of a storm inside me. I have been through many storms. I have been the storm. I've been the thunder and the rain. Menacing and terrible. I've raged with my power daring anyone to get close so I could explode and send them seeking shelter. Hiding in a safe cave. My storms have been my protection. My storms have showed me that I am all I need. My storms have left me exausted and alone. Washed up and destroyed. There was so much power in my storms that I missed the beauty and the glory that a storm can teach. The wonder of the branches bending. The joy in counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder. That's how I see the storms inside me now. A path to this moment. That first instant when the sun peaks out from behind the clouds after so much grey. There is a stillness and I have to shield my eyes from the sunlight. And it seems brighter than it ever has been before.