I look at different mountains now.

I drove to one of the parks next to my house. It's 60 degrees today. The sun is out.

I feel like I haven't felt the sun in years.

Which isn't true, because I was in Mexico a few months ago. But it feels like ages.

It's different to experience the sun again where you live, especially after it's been gone for a while.

It feels like an awakening.

The earth and its people come alive again.

It's so beautiful to see the world shift in this way.

As I found a place on the grass, I took in the mountains overlooking the park.

I can do this without anxiety or grief now because they aren't the same mountains that watch over Provo.

They aren't the same mountains I saw at King Henry, the same mountains I looked at while sitting next to him, the same mountains that might as well have fallen on top of me because I was hurting so much after everything fell apart.

Those mountains were so beautiful to me once.

But I can hardly look at them now without severe and stinging whiplash. They saw the pain play out and didn't do anything about it.

Something should have died.

Something should have fallen apart. Something should have crashed and burned.

Because I was crashing and burning.

But everything around me stayed the same.

I think that's why I feel betrayed by the mountains. How could they just sit there after everything?

I visited them often. I had always looked to them for so much comfort and peace. And then one day they couldn't give that to me anymore.

I was breaking and they didn't break. How dare they? After how much love I gave them? After how much time I spent appreciating their mere existence? How could they not break with me? My heart hurt. I trusted them. I felt safe with them. And they betrayed me.

How can I trust anyone again after that?

It's been a year since this chaos.

It doesn't haunt me every day like it used to.

I am healing. I feel it.

But if you're burned to the core do you ever forget the pain of the fire?

Everything went up in flames in October and raged on until March.

The fire started dying once I moved home but I don't know when it finally died out. June, maybe? When I forgave them both.

But even then, I had to deal with the ash and the smoke. And the smoke lingered through October. I saw it in the mall while shopping to start my life over in a city with different mountains.

The smoke is gone now. There is no ash in sight.

If you went back to where the fire first burned, you wouldn't believe there was ever one there.

But I know it was there.

There are scars seared across my heart from the fire's sparks.