San Jose del Cabo

1630, 12252017

The warnings are never enough. Haphazardly jammed into the San Jose sand, salt-encrusted signs caution in Spanish: No hay socorrista presente.

No lifeguard on duty, gringo; you're on your own.

Calm and in control from the surface, feet and legs kick wildly to stay afloat; the water churns. To the east, the Gulf of California. Looking further southwest, a map of a peninsula forms in your head. The waves carve and shape the shoreline north to the Tijuana River and Imperial Beach. From San Diego to Seattle, you see the entire west coast of North America taking shape from that spot beyond the shore break of Mexico. Framed between diving pelicans, the hotels and resorts of the populous tourist town of Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, fade in and out of breaker mist.

It was the perfect place to tread water for a bit; it had only been a month since your last drink.

Just floating now; the currents below keep bathers diligent. Disappearing between the swells, you remind yourself, as the song goes, you "ain't really drowning 'cause you see the beach from here." It was true, literally and figuratively. The beach was right there; you could swim home anytime you wished.

The gravitational pull of the wave trough is followed by the weightlessness of the crest, that peak moment of potential. That energy is what you've always been after; that's the addiction. It's a high that comes with the lightness of an instant, buoyed by alcohol and thirst, a need for just one more crest in the darkest night that never arrives.

Gravity always wins. No hay socorrista presente.

It's a rhythm, the ebb and flow of pacific waters granted by the tide, that allows for short glimpses of family sitting on the beach. Miles from home, miles from answers. They wave. You wave.

You remind yourself that you can't tread water forever. Still, you keep at it, reemerging on the other side five years later, almost to the day, with stories you can remember and unexplored weightlessness from the unique gravity you now create.