Everest

When I was young I thought I was going to climb Mount Everest. I wanted to be able to say, with complete pride, that I had conquered the largest of mountains, all by myself, and lived to tell about it.

It's strange when you're standing at the bottom of a mountain, how you can have completely conflicting feelings. It's strange how on the one hand, the very genuine and heart breaking emotions of the sheer physical, mental, and emotional experiences that are headed your way, are very overwhelming. On the other, a peace abounds and comfort washes over.

Perhaps after so many times of saying goodbye, I have learned to lock my jaw, stiffen my upper lip, and soldier on. Perhaps I have learned the lesson of not allowing myself to step back and wallow in the sheer enormity of the scenery before me. Perhaps I have learned to concentrate my gaze and my thoughts on the individual step in front of me. Perhaps...

On the other hand, maybe I have learned that fighting and crying and begging and pleading will not change the task before me. It's not like once you get to base camp 3 on Everest that you can just quit. Even if you try to, you still have the task of getting yourself back down off that mountain, and by the time you're at that point, it's hardly worth the effort it takes to quit without accomplishing the goal of reaching the summit. Maybe my heart has broken so many times that to feel whole has become the abnormal and it's the shattered aspect of loneliness that feels like comfortable skin to me. I know what it is to be lonely.

I have thought, with each goodbye, that it would get easier. To tell you the truth, it doesn't. Mountains are mountains and Everests will always be Everests. It will never matter how much my psyche has tried to turn it into a molehill. Just because I may have reached the summit and come back down from it alive, doesn't make the next journey any easier.

I could lace this climb with a thousand what ifs. I could fog up my brain with anxiety and exhaustion and depression. To be honest, I have legitimate reasons to do so. I suppose I'd just rather pick up my pieces of angst and put them in the only Hands that I know are capable of dealing with them, and revel in the excitement of the journey. He has already taken care of so many pieces that my heart has begged and desired for earnestly. I am not alone. As each step comes, and as exhaustion overtakes me...as the emotions of the sheer loneliness of the journey comes, as my mental fatigue washes over from lack of oxygen as I near the top, as my mind plays tricks on me, and my heart begin to consider cessation of beating...I have people who will grab me by the arms and tell me to pick myself up out of the snow and just keep walking. I have ropes anchoring me to the earth as the winds blow and the storms come to knock me off...I have people there to catch me if I lose my footing. I will make it to the top, and then I will turn around and I was drag my tired, weary, emotional, drained butt down off of that summit until I am back where I started from...changed and completely different, but back at the starting point...

When I was young I wanted to climb Everest...