Giant Leaps

There'd been a lot of prep. In getting ready for my new identity I'd done aptitude testing, exploration, volunteering on a crisis line, bought a house, reversed my vasectomy (not by myself) and got engaged. But the two biggest steps were still waiting for me; changing my vocation and my parental status.

The wedding was still a few months away when the day came for my fertility test. It was out at UBC in a nondescript office on the main floor of the hospital.  The sample needed to be fresh out of the gate in order to get a good sperm count so it was delivery on demand. The young lady behind the counter provided the necessary cup and whispered "there's some magazines in the drawer..." My face got warm. I cleared my throat and avoided eye contact as she pointed me in the direction of a small, private room. It was tiny with a metal desk and a chair as its only occupants. The four blank walls could neither distract nor encourage vigour but the old Playboys were in the drawer.

I took the result to the lab and the guy asked me, "You wanna see?" "Hell yeah", I said. He prepared a slide and there they were, sliding around, looking for somewhere to go.
"Hey, you know where we're supposed to go?"
"Nah, but I don't think we're even in the right neighbourhood."
What shocked me were the number of broken boys in the mix, lying there dead before they were even born. I assumed everyone (or no-one) would be swimming by but lab guy assured me it was normal and I was back in the game.

But the big game, my job, was still under consideration. I'd whittled it down to something in mental health and the testing had said it would be a good fit but I'd never done anything like that and I still hadn't seen a job that wasn't self-employed and achieved with just a few years of fulltime school. Volunteering at a crisis line seemed like a good place to try myself out and they provided some excellent training. I learned about empathy and active listening. I learned not to give advice and how to coax people to give themselves advice. I learned how to set boundaries to rein people in and learned how to identify key issues and let people run with them. I learned how to call police while keeping the suicidal caller on the line. And I loved it. So the testing was right, I was in my element, now if I could only just find someone willing to pay me to do this I'd know where was supposed to go.

Just had a quick insight into the workings of crisis line therapy. In writing this piece I referred back to some of the stuff I wrote in 2008 about grief and reread the piece on writing as a tool for recovery. I wrote that the therapy lies in the time spent with fingers hovering over the keys thinking about how you feel. That introspection gets written and edited until you get it right. The pressure drops as you sort through your fears and take some of your sadness and put it into the computer. The crisis line worked the same way; it allowed people to speak their thoughts and staff responded with what they heard. The caller would then clarify (edit) and rephrase to get close to what they were feeling. It helped them to sort through the confusing emotions and unload the weight. Grief is a shitload of weight to carry and whether you choose analog or digital to download the result is the same.

While the fertility testing told me what I wanted to hear, a year later we were still childless. The fertility doctor we waited 6 months to see looked at the file for the first time then looked at us and shook her head. "Just enjoy the sex...". Her remark was patronizing and stupid but mostly just sad and the truth we feared sat on the desk between us. Undaunted, Deb began researching adoption and she set her criteria for a baby. She wanted a baby. A real baby baby, new to the world and unattached to anyone. Too young to have suffered post-natal neglect, someone that would grow up to have only known us as her parents.Boy, girl, White, Black... it didn't matter so long as he-she was a baby and healthy. There were a lot of steps, a lot of money and a lot of waiting - years -  but we got started.

Deb knew someone who knew someone that worked in a profession I'd never heard of; psychiatric nursing. A little research revealed there was a program at Douglas College that graduated wannabees after three years who then wrote an exam that, if successful, made them Registered Psychiatric Nurses. So I went to their open house.  Instructors gave talks on various aspects of the work their grads did, what the pay was like, and what was needed for a successful career. I was hooked. My years of coaching myself through grief and loss could be turned outward and put to good use for others and now, myself. I could use my past to shape my future.

The program was three years, a year more than I'd hoped for but a little flexibility was needed if I was going to get where I wanted to go. To keep the mortgage paid we took in homestay students and I took part time work that related to my approaching field. Six months into the program I hung up the real estate license I'd clung to like a life preserver for 16 years. They say you have to lose sight of the shore to explore new horizons so I turned 180 degrees and sailed my ship in a new direction. And then the call came.
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