Fear. Nobody wants to feel this. And yet as I look outside, worry is slowly creeping through my veins. I can see outside that dark clouds are forming and I can feel the air starts to get quite moist and humid. Oh God, it's going to rain.

Let me get thist straight, I am not afraid of rain. It's just that nowadays rain is accompanied by lightning and thunder. And that is what I'm afraid of. I'm not quite paranoid about it before but due to some recent events, I become afraid of it.

Last weekend, we went to a resort with a wave pool in Cavite. We had some troubles along the way but things become fine when we got there. So after putting our things at our rooms, we went to the wave pool. A wave pool makes a set of waves for every 30 mins so we waited for it. But just as the waves are coming in, a bolt of lightning flashed in the sky and thunder boomed afterwards. Panic enveloped me as fast as lightning came. I did not know if I would get away from the pool or I would stay. Since panic got me first, I got glued on the spot. I could see that others are enjoying themselves(especially my father) in the pool so ,for a minute, I chose staying in the pool. But my mind was not at ease with that decision since my imagination starts putting bad ideas in my head (actually, I also call it nightmares). I imagined things like a bolt of lightning striking the pool thus killing all the people including my family and I (like I said nightmares). But aftrer a few minutes lightning and thunder came again. And because of that I pulled my sister(because I can feel she is the only other person who is more scared than me at that moment) out of the water and ran all the way to the hut we've rented. After a while, all the people were asked to evacuate all the pools and we waited at the hut. Even there, I am still uneasy because I don't like to see the flash of lightning and to hear the booming thunder especially when I am in an open area.

While waiting for the lightning and thunder to stop, I remebered something that happened when I was young. My family and I used to walk a long way from my aunt's house to my grandparents' house every night when we went to Nasugbu. And one night, there was a thunderstorm and we have to brave the storm for us to got to my grandparents' house where we are to sleep. So what happened is that my father and my sister got under an umbrella and my mother and I got under another one. Whenever lightning flashed the whole street seems like day for a second. That walk was one of the longest walk in my life. Everytime lightning flashed, I feel like the next one will hit us surely (Yeah, I'm paranoid). But fortunately, it didn't (duh). And yet, I'll never forget that long walk forever.

And now we're back to our outing. After a few minutes, the rain stopped and so we continue swimming in the pool as if nothing happened hahaha.

....

And yet that's not the end of it. Just yesterday, it struck again. I actually I thought I will have no problem with this one. I was inside my parents bedroom watching tv so I felt quite safe. Then, a bolt of lightning flashed and was immediately followed by thunder. This lightning felt like it struck very near. And if the seconds between the lightning and thunder is divided by 3 is equivalent to how far in miles is it from you, I would say it struck something inside the compound though I did not confirm that. It just that it felt so near that I don't know what to do. Deep inside, I know that if I saw the lightning and I heard the thunder then, that only means I was not hit. And yet, I can't help myself for fearing both (and I know I'm not the only one).

And because of these events, I would say that I am quite paranoid on lightning and thunder. How I wish I could change that.

******

Whew. At last, I got that off my chest.