Do Umbrellas Feel Betrayed When It Doesn’t Rain?

It’s raining and I’m sitting in a bus going somewhere—somewhere vague enough to feel like progress but familiar enough to make me question if I’m just looping through life on autopilot. The windows are fogged, people are half-asleep or pretending to be, and outside, the rain politely ruins everyone’s plans.

I glance at the umbrella tucked beside my seat. It's smug today. Useful. Fulfilled. Finally, it gets to do its one job. No more sulking in dark corners of my bag like some emotionally neglected sidekick. Today, it’s a hero. Rain? Bring it. Wind? Let’s tango.

But then I wonder: What about the days it never gets opened?

Three sunny days in a row, I still carried it like a nervous habit—just in case the sky changed its mind. And on those days, did it feel... betrayed? Like it wore its best water-resistant outfit for nothing? Like it practiced its unfolding motion all night and then got ghosted by the clouds?

Do umbrellas spiral into existential crises when the weather app lies?

Maybe it’s not just umbrellas. Maybe we all have days like that—when we gear up emotionally, mentally, metaphorically, for storms that never come. We rehearse confrontations that dissolve into awkward small talk. We prepare backup plans for disasters that ghost us entirely. We armor up, only to realize the world didn’t need us to be strong today. Or worse, it didn’t notice.

And what does one do with unused preparedness? Where do you store a readiness that’s never called upon? Do you fold it neatly and pretend it doesn’t feel like rejection? Or do you start rusting inside, quietly, from all the effort you didn’t get to spend?

I think the saddest umbrellas are the ones that get forgotten in buses like this one—left behind after a sunny detour, waiting by the back seat like a loyal dog that never got a name. Maybe that’s how people feel too when they give and give, then get left behind just because the rain stopped.

So I sit here, watching drops race each other on the window, wondering if the umbrella beside me knows this is its moment. Or if it’s just another day in the long, confusing weather report of existence—never quite sure whether to open up or stay quietly folded.