Letter to a Friend/Self

Hey buddy. It’s been a while. A while since our drunken escapades. Our deep chats on the meaning of life. Of broken expectations. Longing. And suffering. I’d like to think about something else. 

Remember that 4th of July by the park? Oh, boy. The Pride parades? Remember ol Frankie? Ahhh, shit... those were the good old days. A smile comes over my face. The days that mattered, I guess. Let’s think about that tomorrow.

I swallow a feeling. It doesn’t go down well. I go to bed.

I didn’t want to think about you when I woke up this morning. But, I guess you are here. I’ll do my best. My brow furrows. I look for a feeling to swallow. Breakfast is not ready yet. 

I hiked up the mountain today. It gets me away from my head; from the people on top of each other in the city. It’s a place where, when I reach the top, I can better see the inner workings of my head. I can see the valley below. The landscape of my own mind shaped in an orchestrated grid. The air is clear because we are all homebound. Today, my anxiety lies where the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake meet. Far away. I can see it. But today, I do not feel it. A welcomed sensation; here on top of this mountain. I sit and peer south. I wonder what it was you enjoyed most about your mountains and the views you must have seen. Could you see it - the same way that I see it now? Could you see your fears, your manifestations, your worries, your dread? Could you look down and see yourself but from a better vantage? Or could you only feel the cliffs that surrounded you? I’m worried about the same cliffs more than I’d like to admit. I close my eyes, try to ground myself, and listen to the wind. It lasts only a few seconds. I feel foolish. 

I look behind me to the east. The hills look daunting on some days. On others, I want to run up those hills and shake the feeling of feeling anything at all. Escape. Distance. I wonder if when you looked east, you felt the same. I look at these hills and I think about the sun. I know, I know. Let me explain, man. With certainty, the sun is going to be pestering those very hills in the morning. They are forced into looking at their eventual fate of darkness and light. Like clockwork, nightfall will set, bringing comfort as the west gobbles up the sun. The sun which exposes their flaws. Their imperfections. Their bare spots - where nothing but sparse dry, crackling grass clings to stay alive. But, tomorrow. Tomorrow, they will be forced into another cycle of self-examination. Better to look in another direction, today, I think to myself. Don’t you agree?

I gaze north. Ensign Peak. Can you believe the Mormons wrote a hymn about that damn hill? Me neither. Must’ve seen something you and I didn’t. We never were the proselytized type, were we? I chuckle. 

Ensign Peak, eh? I let out a long slow exhale. How ironic, given the meaning of the word - “ensign”. Don’t you think? You must have been the ensign of so many in your life. A standard by which many on the outside would look up to. A flag flying brilliantly in the pristine blue and beautiful sky. A sky that today looks vastly different and violently shaken. They watched you with pride. Your girls and the women who groveled at your feet. You must have looked so mighty standing at the top of your peak. But how worn down you must have been. Battling that wind. How battered & frayed. Alone. Your sensitive nature displayed like a head on a pike.  

I head back down the trail. I do not suppose to know what it is, was, in your head that told you to go. But what I do see is the trail of tears that is left in the wake. I see the rotted portions of the souls where you left your mark. Rotted, because I do not believe this part of our soul will ever heal - or is meant to. It is not a muscle being worked back into activity. It is not a hill to climb. It is not a seedling that needs more water to grow. It is an unavoidable circumstance of life that we are left to experience. No matter the direction we gaze. 

I go to swallow a feeling. I chew it up instead.