I Was On A Mountain

It's been almost a year since my last trip out west. The first time I went to Banff I was there for just a week. Last Christmas break I spent a week in Banff and a week in Canmore. I wish perhaps that circumstances were different on the last trip. My two trips out west were, at least in part, provoked by my then-boyfriends move out west.

The first time he went we were madly in love and I totally understood his need to go: he had been planning on going before we had met and he had to let his free spirit run wild. I could get with that. In fact, his free spirited nature was one of the things I liked about him to begin with. Anyway, we decided that we'd still make an effort to be together (although my efforts far exceeded his) and that I'd make my way down there for reading week. I had so much fun and I was so sad to go after just a week.

Less than a year later, he decides he wants to go away again. This time for longer. He still wants to stay together. He needs to figure his life out. That's what he said last time. Well, he never figured anything out. Stupidly, I went to visit him again, and spent about a thousand bucks on a trip where we fought a lot because it was minus 25 outside every day and I didn't feel like wandering around getting frostbite,  I didn't really feel like having sex with him because he got so clingy when I first showed up, and we spent a week in a hostel sharing a room with two other dudes, and hence the inevitable awkward times.


Looking back now, I can see that this trip was the turning point of our relationship. I love hiking and being outdoors, and sex, and travel, and new things like hostels, and I will bare the cold as long as there is a purpose and a destination, but the fact is that I had already begun to resent him for stringing me along. Every time I was dissatisfied with something, I would bring it up and he would promise that everything will work out fine and that he'll be a better boyfriend. And it was fine and he was better but only for a while until the same shit kept being brought up. I knew all along we loved each other, probably more than we had loved anyone before. There was an instant cosmic connection that was undeniable. I just never understood why he jerked me around like I would never leave him for the shit he put me through.

I think I was crazy not to leave him in the first place when he went out west, but it's that cosmic connection that kept me there. I understood him and what he was getting out of it. The mountains are a magical place. On a sunny day, you will never see a sky bluer. You will never breathe fresher air. You will never feel the same kind of accomplishment that you do when you reach the top of a (albeit, small) mountain and look down at the whole town. You'll never feel the same kind of joy that you do when sharing the same road with deer.
Right now I feel like I'm at a turning point in my life. I'm so very close to being done school (one month to go!) and I feel like I need to get out of this bubble known as the 905 and see what else is out there. I'm glad that I got strung along by hippie boy if only for the experience of the mountains. I need to go back and this time, I need to go for me and not for anyone else.