I Made It

I grew up wanting to be on a list. Forbes 30 Under 30, specifically.

When the news announced someone was the youngest person to raise a billion dollars, I took it personally. Like they'd walked into my house and taken my spot off the mantel.

No spreadsheet row. No slot. Just a bed near the sea.

I'm a numbers girl. Ninety-five percent and up, gold medals in every field they were handing out gold medals in. My parents were proud in the specific way parents are proud when the proof is printable and framable.

I still keep score. Everything I do has a number attached, even the leisure. Especially the leisure.

Yes, I have a spreadsheet for fun. Yes, I know. Yes, my future therapist and I will get to it.

So travel got a number too. Countries. Finite money, finite time. The math was simple and non-negotiable: every trip is a new country, or the trip is inefficient.

You do not go back somewhere. Going back is a wasted slot, and a wasted slot is basically a moral failing.

Then earlier this year I flew back to Thailand. Not onward. Back. A country already on the count.

By my own logic, a crime. Possibly a felony..

I told myself I needed somewhere to assimilate before going home, which is the kind of thing you say when the real reason is I just wanted to and you can't file that under any known category.

I picked a sleepy beach town famous for retirees, people who go there to relax, slow down, or stop. The least-me decision available on the menu.

I took it.

The evening it happened, I'd been diving. I showered after, the holy kind of shower, where you can feel the salt leave and briefly believe you're a new person.

I took a Scoopy out with no destination, which for me is roughly as radical as skydiving.

I bought my orange coffee from the roadside shack, the one I'd made customary in three days flat, because I turn everything into a routine, because a routine is a small number that says you belong here now.

Then I walked. Aimlessly. A word I get to use approximately never.

Past a gutter (genuinely, a gutter, the universe has no sense of staging) the beach opened up. Busy everywhere else. Here, nobody.

Sand, water, a few boats sitting still like they were also off the clock.

The best sunset I have ever seen, and I say that as someone who has stood in front of a professionally large number of sunsets.

Coffee sweating in my hand. Two dives in me. The light doing the thing it does, turning the whole sky the color of my coffee..

I called my mom.

I said, "Mom, I made it."

No list. No number. Nothing to frame, and nothing missing.