Farts on Mt. Fuji and All the Things I Should’ve Said to Break Up with my Boyfriend

Seven hours, five cans of oxygen, and nothing but a Pikachu onesie keeping me warm, we were almost at the top of Mt. Fuji.

I was working in Japan for three months, and climbing this mountain was at the very top of my bucket list. And with everything else in my life turning into an unstable series of “maybes?” I needed to check something off.

My boyfriend at the time went with me. Not because we were in a great place in our relationship and wanted to do one of those “happy couple” adventures, but because I was leaving in a few days and there was still so much I needed to say.

We’d been in a long-distance relationship for three years when I was offered the internship in Tokyo. At the time, I was studying in Miami while he worked full time in Japan, so I accepted, planning to go there and tell him it was over.

Turns out, it’s really hard to break up with someone you’re living in a foreign country with, across the world from your friends and family.

So I didn’t.

Instead I spent three months crying on a high-tech Japanese toilet, trying to make sense of my life in the most bizarre country I’d ever been to.

In that eight-hour overnight climb, we looked over a ledge to see a plane flying below us. We saw clouds pooling beneath our feet. We saw a clear night sky that we didn’t even have to look up for. Instead the stars surrounded us, up down or straight ahead, it didn’t matter where you looked. Shooting stars felt as if they were flying at us as I clung to the edge of a foreign rock, afraid to fall into the nothingness around me. If you told me we’d accidentally climbed to the moon, I would’ve believed it.

We walked in silence through this curious place. Words bubbled to the surface every now and again, but all the things I left unsaid were the things I needed to say most.

This isn’t working.

I have feelings for someone else.

I don’t think I want it enough to make this work.

I don’t love you anymore.

I kept making up reasons not to say them. Lame excuses like, “it’s not the right time,” or “I’m too tired to fight right now.” But I had been tired for months. Mostly, I was afraid I’d let him talk me out of it again.

It happened once before, on a teary call one night when I said it was over. I wanted out of the glitchy Skype calls, the 12-hour time differences, the scheduling conflicts, and the confused looks I got when I told people I was dating a man who lived on the other side of the planet.

But instead of giving in like I thought he would, he cried and asked for a second chance. And I was too surprised or scared or sad to say no. So I didn’t.

In general, I like to keep a safe distance from most people, but when I do stumble into a casual conversation I tend to have a problem saying “no”. I’ve been sold into personal training classes I couldn’t afford, signed up for a Civil War reenactment club, and bought a dog bone because the cashier told me it was on sale. The problem wasn’t the dog bone — it was that I didn’t have a dog.

But my patchy vernacular has also made me miss out on new opportunities, simply because I was too afraid to let go of the old ones.

I was standing on the ledge of this relationship, and I so wanted to take the leap and pick up the pieces later. But instead I was frozen in place, too afraid to either get off the edge or jump.

So instead, I kept climbing.

As we approached the summit, our climb was pacing out as planned. It was almost sunrise and we were about a half hour from the top. We picked up our stride, fully aware that this beautiful nightmare was coming to an end. Our blistered feet, over-exhaustion and altitude sickness would soon be dealt with.

As for everything else — I had no idea.

When my sister and I were younger, we used to sneak downstairs after our parents fell asleep. Then we’d stay up all night and let romantic comedies from the 90’s feed us lies.

They all lie about the same thing — that even if you have nothing figured out, a Matthew McConaughey-type character will appear out of nowhere, and everything will fall into place when you realize he was the one all along. In those movies, the female protagonist simply has to board a plane somewhere, and suddenly the “nice guy” will magically arrive at her gate without ever passing through TSA.

But what about the women who are too afraid to board their next flight? Is there any hope for them? After all, three years later and I was still here, climbing a mountain with a man I no longer loved.

There weren’t many people around for most of our climb, but as we edged closer to the top, the campsites became more and more crowded. People were popping up out of nowhere, like most people in Japan do. As if to say, oh, you’re walking this way? I’ll follow you and we can go wait in line somewhere together, yay! One minute you’re walking down an empty street in Ebisu, the next you’re getting politely elbowed by hoards of people staring at their phones. They take no notice of you, so you politely elbow them back.

This was pretty much what happened on Mt. Fuji. One minute we’re on a deserted mountain surrounded by stars, the next we’re standing in line behind a hundred other climbers, waiting to summit the mountain.

We ended up seeing the sunrise in that line, just a couple meters from the top. As the sunset rose from the horizon, hundreds of us simultaneously whipped out our smartphones, oohing and awing as we took thousands of the exact same photos and posted them on Instagram. And yes, for some reason all of our data started working in that line.

I suppose this was just true to Japan, a culturally relevant way to end a monumental climb, and my time in this strange country. I remember thinking I would forever remember this as the time I stood on a cliff overlooking the most beautiful sunrise I’d ever seen, surrounded by people who were all there for the exact same reason. For a split second, I didn’t feel so alone.

Then someone in front of us farted.

This wasn’t a regular fart. Nor was it a small, forgettable bottom burp. This was a monumental, lingering emission of gas that lasted for an indescribably long period of time.

We tried to dismiss it at first, waiting for it to pass. But it didn’t. Maybe the guy was machine gunning it. Maybe he’d just been holding it in for eight straight hours, waiting for the perfect moment to release. Either way we were standing on top of a mountain with nothing but sky, and the smell was only getting worse.

“Oh, are you kidding me?” My boyfriend yelled, covering his nose. “Did someone really just fart?”

I started laughing so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the altitude making me light-headed, or maybe I really needed to laugh at something.

Looking back at it now, it was completely absurd. The line and the bubbling words and the sadness and the series of passing moments I was too afraid to grab onto. And then the fart.

So I laughed, and waited for the moment to pass.

Eventually, it did. We went back to our lives, and our final hour came long after we descended this mountain. I was back at school, and he was sitting at the Ikea desk we built together in his apartment. I finally took the leap, telling him it was over for good and that I had feelings for someone else. I watched him get angry as he told me I should’ve said this in Tokyo. I agreed, then apologized, knowing it would never be enough. After we hung up, I wondered if I’d ever see him again. The answer was probably not. Still is.

Two years later, I’d see a post from a mutual friend congratulating him on his marriage. I’d look through his engagement photos and see how happy he looked. For a minute I was falling again, trying to accept that someone who knew everything about me — the goofy, the chin-acne, the smart, the sad — was gone for good.

Then I’d pick up the pieces and board a flight to New York. There was no Matthew McConaughey-type running after me at the gate. Instead there was a new opportunity — a full-time job that I said yes to — waiting for me on the other side. And that was more than enough.

But before all that came, we stood at the top of Mt. Fuji together. Neither of us said a word as we held our breath, inching closer and closer to where we wanted to be.

Just a little longer.