I Never Liked the Rain Until I Walked through It with . . . Me?

A story of learning to love myself, with a '90s country song.

It’s a chilly October night in Chicago, and the rain is coming down hard. Tall puddles span substantial chunks of my street, making it impossible to walk through without my feet getting soaked. The downpour could sour my mood, but there’s a song I listen to in the rain that brightens it.

Clint Black’s 1996 hit, “Like the Rain,” is one of my favorite love songs of the ‘90s. It showcases Black’s blend of swagger and vulnerability that make several of his records among my favorites in country music.

For years, I liked this record musically, but couldn’t apply it to my life. I’ve never had good luck with love, often falling for unavailable people who never cared about me. On a bounty of occasions, I’ve met someone and immediately started planning a future together, including songs for marriage proposals.

So, hearing Black sing, “I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you” had a strange effect on me. Having seasonal depression, I could try to imagine what it would feel like to enjoy rain and even to find it nourishing, but something didn’t compute—and it wasn’t simply the idea of being with someone else.

As an autistic person, I try to find a good reason for everything—like I try to rationalize why things happen even if they’re not supposed to make logical sense. After all, why would anybody like rain?

Even with seasonal depression, today I understand. I like rain, but I don’t need anybody else walking through it with me to do so. I’ve cultivated a greater sense of self-love, even if I don’t always feel like I love myself.

It took a long road, but I feel lucky to have gotten here.

Ten years ago, I was in deep despair, even after a few years of incredible love and social validation. Growing up I was obsessed with receiving external validation, including school awards, especially because I had no friends. When I got to college, I felt a shock to my system when peers expressed genuine appreciation for my contributions to life on campus, including as an openly gay man. I’ll never forget my astonishment when hundreds of people gave me a standing ovation when I walked at graduation in 2010.

A year later, with no validation from myself, I wanted to die. What I can’t forget is the strangest thing, from May 7, 2011, two nights after I came close to mixing pills and alcohol and then ran into traffic, somehow surviving physically unscathed.

A straight peer who knew that I liked him but likely knew nothing about my suicide attempt, went out of his way to let me know how loved and appreciated I was. His gesture of validation saved my life.

Part of me is still stumped rationalizing that experience: why the hell was he the one who did what he did? I didn’t ever expect him to care, let alone that much, and because I can’t understand nonverbal communication, I had no idea he cared until that night.

Gratefully, in years since, I’ve grown to rely on others less, including for companionship and validation. The process is very imperfect—I’ve had many times that could disprove that assertion, but those times are more scattershot than they used to be. I’ll take it.

There have since been rough spots with mental illness, including a low point with severe mania that lasted fifteen months, but never have I come that close to intentionally harming myself.

I know that “on the darkest day there’s always light,” as Clint Black sings. And I like the rain.

With my autism and corresponding literal understanding of song lyrics, the degree to which songs can directly affect my mood and change my life can still amaze me. But at a certain point, listening to the song made me actually enjoy some precipitation: “Like the Rain” made me like the rain.

So, with my loathing of harsh weather and sometime resultant devolution into a sea of blubbering self-pity, this song made a difference in my life.

I can’t say any song will make me enjoy the Polar Vortex if it comes around anytime soon, but today I go outside with “Like the Rain” blasting in my headphones, and I think to myself, “I never liked the rain until I walked through it with you, Josh.”

I’m more present these days, enjoying my own company. Maybe I’ve never been in love, but I can like the rain walking through it alone, and in some ways that feels more like progress than marriage ever could.

So, to me, this song oddly symbolizes a shift in self-love and, to a lesser extent, self-care. In addition to engaging healthier habits like working to set boundaries, take more walks, and listen to more positive music, I’m okay living alone, learning to deal with life in healthier ways.

And maybe someday I’ll like the rain walking through it with someone else. But for now, I’ll ride this storm out, and I’ll be just fine.