My mother and I went to Utah over the weekend. My brother’s wife’s parents have a condo in a small mountain city there. We met my brother and sister-in-law in the airport Thursday night, and drove a rented car up through the mountain roads to the condo. It was dark, and you couldn’t see much, but sometimes I would catch a hazy glimpse through the car windows of mountains looming off to both sides.

I love mountains. I feel happier when I’m near mountains than in any other environment. They make me feel secure and grounded in a way that nothing else does, but at the same time they keep me focused on possibilities and potentials and growth. I love them.

So I was very happy to be there. The only thing is, the city where we stayed is 10,000 feet above sea level. Which is crazy high. So we had to be careful to wear lots of sunscreen. But more problematic was the dryness. Theoretically, low humidity is a wonderful thing. You don’t feel sweaty, and even very high temperatures don’t feel as miserable as they might in a different climate, and your skin stays clear and healthy. But… it was just way too dry. It went beyond the good type of dry. My nose got raw and sometimes bled, and the skin around it began to peel no matter how often I used a moisturizer.

So, I do love the mountains. But I think I would want to live near some slightly lower mountains than the ones where we stayed in Utah.

One strange thing though. I’ve talked about my brother on this blog before. Mostly about how insanely I love him and want him to like me. Well, here’s an update. I give up. I don’t even care anymore. This weekend he was mean to me. Not in a new way: just the same type of meanness he’s always had. Making fun of me, lots of scorn, looks of disgust. And I know I am not the only person he treats this way — it’s just how he is. But it hurts me more because I have spent so long wanting so much for him to like me and approve of me. And I’m sick of it. I’m tired of the longing and the disappointment. He says some little mean thing, and it hurts so much more than it should. I used to be able to deal with it, because I was otherwise fine and happy in life. But right now, I’m not fine and happy anymore, and so I don’t have enough extra energy to cope with it. I feel enough hurt from other things in life, I can’t deal with these little insults of his right now. So I feel that adoration for him dying. I still love him; he’s my brother. But I don’t feel so desperate to be close to him, desperate to make him like me. I just can’t care about it anymore. I give up.

I still want his wife to like me though. I wonder if I should send her a present.

We were supposed to leave Sunday afternoon, stop once in Denver, and get home Sunday evening. But there were storms in Denver and so our flight out of Utah was delayed. Once our flight finally left, the bad weather in Denver continued, and so our plane was not allowed to land for some time. Flights from Utah to Denver should normally take about an hour, but we were in the air for almost three hours, flying in circles waiting for permission to land in Denver. By the time we landed, our connecting flight home had already left without us. So we had to get a hotel room in Denver and wait until Monday evening before we could get on another flight and finally get home. Luckily, my school was closed Monday for the holiday, and so I didn’t miss any classes.

Now I am home and exhausted, but so happy to see my little kitten again after the long weekend away!

mountains · Utah · Utah heights