Who can refuse a baray, the Khmer word for cigarette when it’s local and you’ve just spent the last 6 hours with high school students/teachers and you’ve been on your absolute best behavior?
I know I can’t.
Judge away if you will, but that cigarette… excuse me, baray… changed the course of one night.
Quick update for the readers – I have a type. No, not the cigarettes. Honestly, I’ll smoke whatever brand you put in front of me. I have a type when it comes to men.
This is not groundbreaking information. It is not new information. It is, in fact, information that has followed me around several countries and at least two different continents.
I like older men.
Not “slightly older.” Not “a few years older.” I mean older enough that my friends occasionally stare at me, do the math in their heads, and ask if everything is okay.
Everything is fine.
At least I think it is.
It was that first puff of the cigarette outside of a Cambodian hotel when I asked if a seat was taken that I realized the pattern had officially become undeniable.
Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea, Cambodia was supposed to be about culture. About history. About community engagement. About temples and understanding. All about this country that had already captured my heart within hours of arriving.
It was not supposed to be about a French hotel general manager.
And yet.
Travel has a funny way of laughing at your plans.
One minute you’re discussing ancient civilizations and trying to understand how an entire community came together to build something like Angkor Wat. The next minute you’re wondering how a Frenchman managed to make eye contact feel like a competitive sport.
The thing is, it wasn’t really about him.
That’s the easy version of the story.
The harder version is that somewhere over the last few years I stopped feeling particularly visible. Not invisible, because that would imply that you weren’t seen at all and that was not the case. I was being seen by coworkers, customers, family, responsibilities, bills, deadlines, by everything… except by me.
I started feeling more practical, responsible, and busy. When you decide to pick up your whole life and move across the country, things can start to add up and you don’t tend to have time for the shenanigans you once had.
I became the woman answering emails, trying to keep her head above water at work with a new territory and ripping as many outbounds as I could.
I was the woman now struggling to pay the bills, because how in the world did gas increase by a dollar fifty?
I was the woman who thought maybe moving was a mistake and it was time to formulate a new plan. What’s my next step? How can I keep from being stagnant? What is my purpose in this world?
Life became one spreadsheet after another. You should see my Google Drive right now with the number of different sheets I have for specific purposes in regards to what you just read. Drowning.
Now suddenly I’m halfway around the world, asking to borrow a lighter on the back patio of a Cambodian Hotel, talking to a Frenchman with silver at his temples and the confidence of someone who has stopped apologizing for taking up space.
And I remembered something. I remembered that I’m still a woman before I’m a professional. Still adventurous before I’m practical. Still curious before I’m sensible. Still capable of being completely and utterly distracted.
Travel does that.
It strips away the version of yourself that was built for efficiency. The version optimized for meetings and schedules and productivity. It leaves behind the person underneath.
The person who gets excited.
The person who flirts.
The person who says yes.
The person who isn’t entirely sure what’s going to happen next and is strangely okay with that.
Maybe that’s why I keep falling for older men. I don’t think it’s because of the age itself, although I am drawn to their knowledge and wealth of experiences. But I believe that they have something figured out that I long for.
They’re comfortable being exactly who they are.
No performance. No audition. No panic. No pretending.
Just certainty.
And maybe that’s what I’m really attracted to. It’s not age. It’s freedom.
Freedom.
The freedom to stop asking permission to become yourself.
The freedom to walk into a room and belong there.
The freedom to build a life that doesn’t need constant explanation.
The Frenchman wasn’t the story.
Cambodia wasn’t even the story.
The story was realizing that somewhere between the temples, the conversations, the humidity, and the long flights, I had started becoming that woman too.
The one who takes up space.
The one who books the ticket.
The one who starts over when she has to.
The one who falls in love with countries faster, and far more often than she falls in love with people.
Although, to be fair, the French accent certainly didn’t hurt.
Neither did the cigarette.