Beth Bradley - The Hardest Climb

 

I really wanted to cry and I really wanted to give up, but I really didn't want to do both, and I was running out of time to make up my mind. It was 11:45 AM, and I was sitting on a huge pile of rocks located about 13,700ft above sea level. I was trying to get to the 14,000-foot summit of the mountain that these rocks belong to, but I only had about 15 minutes left. And that's because when you're at that type of elevation, it gets really dangerous to be on the summit anytime, after 12:00 PM in Colorado, because there's lightning that rolls in pretty much every afternoon in the mountains in the summer. 

 

So, I've been climbing straight up, up, up this mountain for the past five or six hours with two of my best friends, Katie and Dawn. I only had about a quarter mile left to go, but it might as well have been 500 miles. Katie and dawn have both done a climb like this before, but not me. Basically, my whole life, the world's been telling me, I'm too fat to try stuff like this. So, I pretty much believe that too. And even though Katie and Dawn and I have been friends for 20 years, I was still nervous to be climbing with them, because I knew they'd be able to do it no problem and I'd be the slow one. 

 

So, I had been training and doing research for months. I remember one article that I came across suggested that you bring Kleenex with you, because when you're up at that elevation, the wind blows like crazy, so your nose is probably going to be running. So, I had not only heeded that advice, I had actually bought the name brand Kleenex for an extra dollar, because they happen to have motivational messages printed on them [audience laughter] like, “Believe in yourself and seize this moment.” [audience laughter] But nothing, not even the Kleenexes, had prepared me for how I was feeling at 11:45, which was just completely depleted and essentially catatonic.

 

So, Dawn and Katie had gone up ahead to scope out the rest of the trail and I was just alone with my thoughts, which had been pretty positive up till then. I felt like all that preparation was paying off, but now the disappointment was just seeping in. And the worst part about that was how familiar it tasted. 

 

Three years before that, I had moved all the way out to Seattle. And even though I had approached that move with the same exhaustive preparation as this climb, I felt like I just couldn't get my life to work out there. Like, it was just one failure after another. Like, the job I got turned out to be a bad fit, I couldn't get acclimated and then the relationship that I was in fell apart in a really excruciating and heartbreaking way. So, I had managed to get myself home. I'd managed to move back to Colorado. But I felt like I had gone on this 2,000-mile detour just to end up exactly where I started. So, I wanted it to mean something. I wanted being home to mean something and I wanted all that time to count.

 

The mountains have been there all along. But for the first time, I found myself wanting to know what it would feel like to be on top of one. But the higher I got, the heavier all of that felt. And the later it got, the more the pressure was bearing down. At this point, I noticed that everyone else I could see was very thin and lithe, and they were just scampering up the rocks like the world's most annoying pack of gazelles. [audience laughter] No one else was struggling like I was. So, I was scared and I was overwhelmed. I was hating my body for being too fat and my mind for being too weak. I just kept thinking to myself, who do I think I am to even attempt this? Like, who do I think I am to even try? 

 

So, at this point, I could see that Katie was headed back down to where I was. I could tell from her eyes that she was going to say that it was too late and we needed to turn around and that it would be too dangerous to keep going at the pace that I was going were too slow. So, she came and sat down on the rock next door. I was just letting that defeat settle in. But then, totally calm, Katie said, “We should keep going. I know you can do it.” So, then a weird thing happened, which is that I realized I believed her. Even though Katie and I have been friends forever and she said stuff like that to me before, this time, I finally heard it. 

 

And so, when I had been asking myself, who do I think I am, the answer had been this person who's too fat to keep trying, who kept failing over and over. But Katie was seeing someone else. She was seeing someone she loved who'd been through all of that and kept going. So, she was seeing someone strong. So, when Katie said that I could do it, it sounded different than the Kleenex. [audience laughter] It sounded like the truth. So, I decided not to give up. Wanting to cry became my only motivation. And the next 10 minutes, we were just like a blur of pain and exhaustion. But basically, right at noon, I heaved myself over the last stupid rock. [audience laughter] I was surprised to find myself on the flat, solid ground at the summit. 

 

All of those gazelle people were hanging out, and smiling and taking pictures. I was the only person who was smiling and openly weeping. [audience laughter] I was also hugging Katie and Dawn like crazy. I was petting dogs, [audience laughter] and I was looking out at the view, which was as incredible as anything I've ever seen. I realized I would also advise being Kleenex if you do a climb like this, because crying on top of a mountain is a wonderful feeling and I'd recommend it to anyone. So, it's good to be prepared. [audience laughter] I keep chasing that feeling. I keep trying to climb more mountains. Sometimes I get to the top and sometimes I don't, but what I've noticed is that one question isn't coming into my head anymore, that question of who do I think I am? Now, I know who I am.