"With thy blast of thunder/O tear me asunder!"

Storms. Good god, I love 'em. Too often here in Denver, we get the huge clouds, the darkened skies, the thunder, a fair bit of wind, some lightning, and some big raindrops. But all too often, they just tease us with what sounds like it could be some rip-roarin' fun, then move on with nothing to show for it except further evidence that we're just an inch of rain or so from living in a full-on desert.
For some reason, while Texas and so much of the south is reeling from a gawdawful drought, we've been getting rain, rain, rain, for once. And last night was the wildest of it all. I wandered outside to skies that were lit up almost constantly from lightning behind the most frightening, forbidding squall line I've ever seen. (Cue "Ride of the Valkyries" or "Night on Bald Mountain.") Seriously, the sky was dark midnight purplish-blue, and the thunder, for quite a while, was ominously silent. Only the wind played with the trees, freakishly, tickling the leaves in preparation for an onslaught.
And man, did it come. I haven't seen a storm pummel the earth like this one did in years. Some people get frightened to death of thunderstorms. I have to be a part of it. I run outside and stand, flee, exult in the middle of it all, and am whipped around by the wind, stung by the rain, blinded by the lightning, and riven by the thunder deep in my bones. And I run back inside, my body flooded with water, shivering, and screaming, "I'M ALIIIVE!!!" It's my soul's all-too-swift escape from a beige, cubicled world.

Storms like that inspire a myriad of Facebook posts, of course. Unfortunately, I notice how many people were amazed by all the "lightening." And I die a little inside.

(Added: Not five minutes after I posted this, did another wild storm hit town. You know exactly what I did. Only this time, I had to wait until the hail passed. My revelries do know bounds, after all.)