The altitude makes you small and large at the same time, a strange feeling like i'm both less and more than i thought, like all the things that mattered down there don't reach up here and all the things i ignored down there are screaming in my ears, not screaming but maybe… like that almost-gone ringing after a loud concert, the kind you only notice when everything else is gone. i thought i was coming up here to escape the noise, but i brought it with me, tucked it into my pack like a souvenir i didn't even want, and now the only way to get rid of it is to leave it on the rock, let the mountain have it. i keep thinking i'm earning something, some kind of… peace but maybe it's just a different kind of honesty, the kind where you can see the lies you've been telling yourself because there's nothing else to look at, just… granite and sky and the thin ache of being alive and how that's enough, somehow. i don't know why i'm even writing this here. guess it's the only way to let it go.