Back when I lived in Michigan, during my freshman year, I attended high school.  One day I walked home with my best friend, Jeff. We were talking and I glanced up at the sky. It was grey just like any other day with bad weather. I didn’t think much of it. 

When we arrived at my house, Jeff and I played Xbox together—after some time, we decided to go outside on the trampoline in my backyard. We set up a mini basketball hoop at the top of the netting, and began a game of horse and only variations of dunking were allowed. 

Jeff went first and did a backflip while leading into a backwards dunk. He made it. My turn. I bounced higher and higher to build up my momentum. Halfway through my flip, everything slowed. I saw the sky, only this time it wasn’t grey. I saw the green wisps of air darting throughout sky. They all traveled in some sort of pattern, like a routine they planned for years and finally got to perform. And suddenly, they came together, converging into something larger.  And it started to rush towards me. I landed.

My dunk didn’t go in, but I didn’t care, as I ran into my house. I ran to the basement. I looked outside and my trampoline wasn’t there. I looked up to see that the green wisps of air took my trampoline. I stood there looking out the window on my two person brown couch, with red and blue geometric designs. I stood there at the window, with the vertical green folding curtain opened all the way up, looking at the green sky taking away my childhood and destroying my neighborhood. I stood there staring at the details of the storm and what it was taking with it. And suddenly I couldn’t see anything. I was on the ground. 

The glass grabbed me and held me down against the floor, water rushed through the windows while the wind pulled and pinned me against the wall. The emotional pain far surpassed the physical pain. I didn’t want to die young.  I laid there hopelessly in the water that had been diluted with my tears.

Those moments when I had no control over what was happening, and the moments I thought I was spending my last breaths on Earth, emphasized the fact that everything in this world is good and bad, including the intangibles. I now appreciate nature for how beautiful it is, and what some people might not think much of, like the clear blue sky, is truly beautiful to me because I’ve met the other side of nature.