Counting Down

Ryan Cleland (he/him) 

I’d like to say I was pretty good at math as a kid. No Einstein, sure, but I held my own. When I was in Year 1, I learnt that 12 × 12 was 144. Now I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it made all the adults look impressed. 

Numbers gave things meaning. There was a simplicity to the way everything fell into place. I counted a lot. I liked math — all through school it fascinated me. I loved to count and programme, figuring out the little patterns and puzzles of day-to-day life. 

Then you came along. And suddenly, I began counting differently. I was counting up. One week since I met you. Two weeks since we kissed. Five dates in, I met your dad. We said 6pm, but I got there at 5. Early and awkward, I wandered the street, filling the time until the right number rolled around. The one that said it was okay to knock on your door. 

Numbers everywhere reminded me of you. An anniversary: 12/08. Your favourite number: five. Mine: seven. Even the months began to tick on. 

Then you went overseas. And I started to count down. Okay — a hundred and seventy days remaining. That’s twenty-four weeks. Or seventeen lots of ten. All I had to do was make it through one week. And then the next. And then the next. I won’t lie, it seemed a daunting task at first. But the beauty of numbers and patterns is that they stop for no one. They just keep ticking, bit by bit. I saw numbers often with you. A twenty-minute call here, two hours and forty-eight minutes there. Each week another number changed like leaves turning in autumn: slowly, subtly, until one day you look back and the whole landscape is different. 

I’m about halfway now. Ninety-five days, my timer says. Technology is amazing — these days my phone does all the counting for me. But I still count. Each day the number moves down, and each day I look forward to you coming back. And then the pendulum will swing. And I will get to count up once more.