California is primarily a drought state. At least it has been as long as I can remember, and some years have been worse than others. We typically go for months at a time with no precipitation (unless you count fog), years without snow, and our relative humidity is usually quite low. The hills and valleys along our portion of the Pacific Coast offer plenty of sport for incoming weather systems, sending them into variations of fog, wind, rain, cold, heat, smog, high clouds, and everything else a meteorologist could think of.

For the past few days we’ve had rain. Heavy at times overnight, lighter during the day, but generally wet enough that the dogs don’t want to set foot off the covered porch and head down the stairs to the cold, wet dirt where they need to do their business. For my part, I don’t want to take them for long walks in the rain as I seem to have lost the 2-3 umbrellas I know we have in the house, and I don’t much enjoy walking about in wet jeans.

I once walked over a mile through a torrential rainstorm in Doolin, on the western coast of Ireland in County Clare, just to see some live music at a local pub. On the walk back to the hostel where I was staying, the rain was blowing sideways, and I bellowed songs into the wind to keep my spirits up. By the time I reached the hostel, I was soaked through. I flopped my sodden clothes over the side of my bunk and slept soundly through the night.

I can handle a bit of damp. It’s simply that I choose most often not to.

Over the weekend Thomas and I attended a large party celebrating the birthday of an old family friend of his. The rain held off for a few hours, which was much appreciated. Cloud cover kept most of the cold out, and the evening was enjoyably chilly for winter, without being absolutely too cold to stand outside. I knew almost no one at the crowded event, and he knew nearly everyone. This is his town, his community, his family. Waiting for our table’s turn in the buffet line, I felt twitchy and impatient, so I fell back on my food service training and walked around the room, clearing up empty hors d’oeuvre plates. It felt good to be useful for a few minutes, at least.

As the evening progressed and other guests came up to say hello to Thomas and his family, I was introduced at least once as “and this is my… this is Carol.” I smiled and shook hands with another stranger, as was polite. Deep inside, my heart curled up a little tighter, but I didn’t show it. I’ve been introduced in such as way before. It hurts, even though he probably thought nothing of it at the time. “The room was loud, and no one was listening anyway,” he told me when I mentioned it.

It’s not that I doubt his affections. Over the past week we have reconciled much of what had been tearing us apart, but there’s a long way to go before trust is rebuilt. There have been subtle changes in his behavior; parts of his life that were once open to me are now closed, and I can feel the chill. Even as he holds me close, I know there’s a distance between us that wasn’t there before. I hope it isn’t insurmountable. I certainly don’t think it need be, but we are both two very trusting people who have had that trust broken many times before by others. We know what it is to love and be hurt by the ones we give our hearts to. We’ve both had salt poured on our wounds.

Tonight I am listening to the rain and wind outside as I sit alone downstairs. He has retired to bed, resting up for a busy day tomorrow. I choose this quiet time for introspection, pensiveness, and to poke at my tender places that sting from all the tears shed lately. That salty rain seeps into everything, dissolving some connections, strengthening others.

Remembering the rain as it blew in my face and I shouted down the storm that night in Ireland, I know the wet is only temporary. A long rest in a warm bed can cure many ills. Upstairs there is a warm bed, and a man who is very dear to me. As soon as I find my way between the sheets, he will wrap his arms around me and pull me close. My heart will uncurl just a bit, and I will dream of sunshine.

Sometimes I wonder what purpose there is to what I do. I mean, writing doesn’t exactly keep me fit, put food on the table at a reasonable hour, keep the house tidy, walk the dogs, or do much of anything else obviously useful. Sometimes my writing even alienates people. If I hold an opinion and write about it, I’m bound to insult, inflame, or otherwise upset at least one person. All I can do is hope that person isn’t another writer with a bigger audience than I have. Writing sometimes feels like an intangible commodity, and one that has perhaps less respect today than it did a decade ago.

With a worldwide increase in literacy, access to the internet on a variety of devices, and free publishing tools anyone can use, it’s no surprise that writing has boomed, or perhaps blossomed, more exponentially in the past decade than it has since the invention of the printing press. Humans need to communicate; it’s in our nature to do so. Solitary confinement tends to drive us insane, no matter how gently its administered.

Sometimes communicating isn’t easy. There are times you want to convey something but it comes out all wrong, no matter how perfectly concise it sounded right before you moved the words from your brain to your mouth. Sometimes the words that do come out sting in ways you didn’t anticipate. Sometimes the sting is intentional, but the fallout is worse than you’d planned on. Sometimes a difficult line of communication results in communication shut down, and solitary confinement. Sometimes that solitary confinement occurs in a crowd of strangers, almost any of whom you wish would speak to you, just to break your own silence.

And then there are times when you heed the gentle insisting of your friends to reopen lines of communication and untangle the web of silence. That is especially difficult for me. Silence was a form of control in my childhood experience, used against me in ways that lodged firmly in my mind. When you are angry with someone’s words you can either tell them to be silent, or silence yourself. I watched this dynamic with my family and across generation lines. My father would walk away from my mother’s angry words. My mother would talk circles around his. My grandmother held a silent grudge against her sister for 40 years. My own sister would shut me out from her world by refusing to speak to me. I would talk my heart out to express fear, anxiety, or longing. I still do.

I know how to hurt with words. It isn’t that I want to, but it is something I learned early on as a defense mechanism. I can speak a poniard, a knife, a scalpel. I can find the tender miseries hidden inside, cut them out and hold them up to the light. Living with my ex husband taught me how to hone this gift even more than my family had. These days I prefer to use my powers for good, by writing catchy ad copy, uplifting interviews, and utilitarian reviews, but the razor-mind is still there, carefully sheathed.

I don’t apologize for what I said Sunday night to hurt the man I love. He needed to hear it, even though he hates me for it. I don’t expect him to apologize for what he said to me, either, although I want him to. I needed to be jarred back into a less subtle state. I work better under pressure, and thanks to his words, I’ve found myself falling back into a survival mode I haven’t been in for quite a while. It’s productive, but lonelier than my lax mode. I’m back to carrying necessities with me, keeping lines of communication open with some, closed with others. I went from wearing a comfortable, sloppy, bright red sweater all week, to wearing a gray coat with many pockets, something to allow me anonymity in a crowd and access to whatever I need while I’m away from the house I don’t feel welcome in. I don’t even take it off when I’m in the house, just in case I need to leave the silence within and find a quieter solitude outside.

Writing keeps me sane. It’s saying the wrong thing that worries me.