“When the Rain Started Calling My Name”

When the Rain Started Calling My Name

By [Ali Rehman]

The first time it happened, I thought it was the wind.

A soft whisper curling beneath the storm clouds, brushing against the window like a forgotten breath. The rain was gentle that night, tapping its fingers along the glass in a rhythm that almost resembled speech. I leaned closer, half-asleep, half-curious, telling myself I was imagining things.

But then I heard it again.

My name.

Not shouted. Not spoken.

Carried.

It drifted through the drizzle like a secret the sky had been holding for far too long. I froze, listening, heart pounding in the quiet room. Outside, the streetlamps flickered like nervous eyes, and puddles rippled without footsteps.

“Myra…”

The voice was unmistakably mine.

Or rather — mine from a long, long time ago.

I stepped outside barefoot, letting the rain fall cold against my skin. Each drop felt like a memory pressing into me. The street shimmered silver, the scent of wet earth thick and nostalgic. And then it happened again.

“Myra… listen.”

I closed my eyes. The rain gathered around me, flowing in thin, translucent threads that sounded like voices.

Not one.

Not two.

Hundreds.

All of them mine.

It was like standing in the center of a chorus made from every version of myself I had ever abandoned. The child who used to dance in storms. The teenager who wrote poems she never showed anyone. The young woman who believed love could fix everything. The older one who learned love could also break you.

All of them were speaking to me through the rain.

But why?

A drop landed directly on my lip, warm despite the cold.

Remember me.

Another on my forehead.

Don’t forget who we were.

And another on my hand.

We were brave once.

I sank down onto the steps, letting the storm soak through my clothes, hair clinging to my face. I didn’t feel cold. I felt… recognized.

The rain was not simply falling.

It was calling.

It was reaching back through years I had tried to bury — years that still lived quietly inside me, waiting for a moment like this to surface.

“Why now?” I whispered to the clouds.

The voices merged into one soft echo.

Because you stopped listening.

Something tightened in my throat. They were right.

I had spent years running from myself — filling my days with noise, burying my regrets under obligations, ignoring the quiet ache that came at night when the world finally stilled. I had grown older, but not necessarily wiser. More cautious, but not calmer. More accomplished, but less whole.

The rain began to fall harder, each drop striking the pavement like punctuation to a sentence I had forgotten.

Then one voice rose above the rest.

It was small.

Young.

Hopeful.

A version of me I hadn’t heard in decades.

“Do you remember,” she asked, “the girl who believed storms were messages from the universe?”

I swallowed hard. I had believed that.

As a child, thunderstorms thrilled me — the sky speaking in languages louder than words.

“Do you remember,” she continued, “the dreams we had before fear learned your name?”

Another voice layered beneath it — an older, tired version of me.

“And do you remember the promises we broke to ourselves?”

The rain blurred the world into a watercolor painting. My breath hitched as tears mingled with the storm.

“I haven’t forgotten you,” I whispered.

But even as I said it, I knew I had.

Forgotten the girl who dared to imagine.

Forgotten the woman who once loved boldly.

Forgotten the strength I had traded for safety.

“We’re still here,” the voices said gently. “We never left. We were only waiting for you to come back.”

A slow wind pushed the curtain of rain sideways, revealing a reflection in a puddle at my feet — not my current reflection, but shifting, blending versions of me. Younger. Older. Braver. Softer.

I reached toward them, and the puddle rippled as if reaching back.

“What do you want from me?” I asked, voice trembling.

The rain softened, each drop falling more deliberately, like careful syllables in a long-lost language.

We want you to live again.

The words struck something deep inside me. Something I had boarded up and sealed shut. I didn’t realize until that moment how long I had been living… halfway. Breathing, but not really feeling. Moving, but not truly going anywhere.

And for the first time in years, I let myself cry — openly, fully — as the rain wrapped around me like a familiar embrace.

The storm began to quiet, fading into a gentle drizzle. The last whisper drifted from the clouds, softer than a heartbeat:

Come back to us.

Then the sky stilled.

The voices faded.

The night returned to its usual rhythm.

But inside me, something had reopened — a doorway, a memory, a promise.

And I understood:

The rain wasn’t calling my name.

It was calling me home to myself.

Moral:

The past is never truly gone — it waits for us in the quiet places, calling us back to the versions of ourselves we’ve forgotten but still need.