It rained, and it rained, and it rained

This story is also in the section 'Stories' but here, you can comment :)

A grown-up dreamer

He never said he liked being weird.

He just was.

Weird.

He never told anyone how much he liked to be alone.

He just was.

Alone.

Anyway, that sure was a weird beginning. Let's get on with the story.

His name was Rodger, and he was a weirdo - not the kind of weirdo that blinks at you, makes funny noses and on the whole, creeps you out.

Nor was he a geeky weirdo - he didn't have a special interest in anything.

He was a kind of dreamy weirdo - a weirdo, whom sensible people wouldn't have called a weirdo, but everyone in his life called him that way.

Yeah, there weren't many sensible people in his life at first, that's true.

He was a teenager, and he didn't wear braces or glasses, so he didn't actually look 'weird' as lots of teenagers like to call boys and girls with glasses and braces.

He looked pretty normal - a tall, thin, not excessively handsome guy, though not exactly without some charm(that is, nobody got to see this charm except the author, otherwise you wouldn't have even heard this story).

His skin was pretty clean for a teenager, though of course he had some blackheads on his nose and everything, but they weren't super visible, so he didn't mind. When, sometimes, he saw his imperfections in the mirror, he just sighed and thought: hey blackhead, I think we've known each other for some time.

He wasn't in any way crazy about the way he looked, but he wasn't dirty or neglecting his appearance in any way.

Girls never called him a cutie - in fact, they were too busy flirting with the other, "cuter" guys to pay attention to him. One or two girls tried to come up to him and act very 'nice; and 'girlish-y', but he looked them in the face and said: something I can do for you?

That put an end to their flirting with him and afterwards they only talked about him as 'that weird lonely' guy.

Maybe he was a 'weird lonely' guy. He didn't actually care.

In class, his face always assumed a tense, busy expression, and he really was studying hard. That made his mother really proud and in a way, he liked studying too - only when the subject wasn't something as boring as maths or geography.

After school, he always left alone, crossed the street, went through a park, then crossed a bridge over a little river and finally came to his house, where he lived with his Mum and Dad.

That's what the Mum and Dad thought anyway.

To tell the truth, they didn't know anything about his life.

They only knew he went to school, studied there, and came home when school was over.

But what they didn't know was how he went back. They didn't know how he left the school building, crossed the street and entered the park, and how slowly, but steadily, the busy, tense expression left his face and he started smiling quietly to himself. How he crossed the park, going faster and faster, and then running through it, waving his arms around as if he wanted to learn to fly.

Then he came home, said 'hey Mom' in and shut himself up in his room.

There, he suddenly became alive. He shook off his school bag and shoved it somewhere out of sight, so as not to see it.

Then he went over to his bookshelf and took out a picture book, and sat down on the bed and looked at the pictures intently, remembering every detail. Afterwards, he shut his eyes tightly and tried to remember every single detail and to see it with his eyes closed.

That was called his imagination training game.

Then he took out his favorite picture books and started copying them into an album, full of his drawings. 

Most of the books he owned were fantasy and fairy-tale and since he long wasn't a kid anymore it was kind of 'weird' again, as many put it.

He did 'normal' things too though. Listened to music, went to the cinema, played video games sometimes, though rarely.

His family knew him as a serious kind of guy. His class knew him as a weirdo.

In fact, nobody knew him at all.

He couldn't have been called a kid, because he really wasn't one.

He was grown-up and he knew what suffering and having to make decisions was like.

Though sometimes he wished he was a kid. It usually came at a time when he was sad or depressed, or going through a bad time in his life.

That's when he wished it would rain and the lights would go out and he would lie down on the bed, hugging a pillow and sobbing tearfully until tears came no more.

He remembered his childhood vaguely, and the relief and even delight he took in crying when he was little.

Now, he never cried.

Never. 

He thought a lot and once he thought that sobbing on the bed is a kid's way of being sad. And the lights'd better be out too and it'd better be raining.

An adult's way is a far harder one. It is sitting on the bed, looking at the wall, being completely calm, smiling even, smiling through the pain and through the very impossibility of the smile, feeling disgusted at yourself, because you are smiling when you should be weeping. And the worst part of it is the sun shining through the open window and hearing other people's voices from out there - happy.

So, he wasn't a kid. He wasn't a boring grow grown-up either.

He was (in the author's opinion) the best kind of person. A grown-up dreamer.

He daydreamed all the time. Imagined things that could never ever happen.

He never was sad that they wouldn't happen - he liked to dream about them all the same.

He liked to dance to music when nobody saw him do that. He sang with the singer and he jumped around when he liked the melody really much.

And most important of all, he never felt lonely.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he wished he had someone to tell about his awesome dreams. Someone to share with - he felt he had so much of this awesomeness he might as well share. And the great thing is, he did share - otherwise you wouldn't have heard this story.

I don't know why I wrote this story down. Maybe no one's interested. But I felt like Rodger's story had to be shared. Because in case another grown-up dreamer reads this, they'll know their reality is an awesome one. And that there's nothing weird in being weird.

The End