Day 2: How I Got To "Who" I Am

**** WARNING EXTREMELY LONG POST!****

I recently had to write an essay for my developmental psychology class about how I knew what I wanted to do with my life... if I even knew at all. This is an exerpt from it, and something I had been planning to share on this blog for some time but had never gotten the opportunity to put it into words.


...Then came the event that changed my life. I know this seems cliché, but it was as if a higher power was showing me the frivolity of my life. I think it all started on September 11th, 2001, when two planes hit the World Trade Center. I am sure this was a monumental day in the lives of many Americans and others across the globe, but it set the wheels in motion that lead me to become who I am today. After the terrorist attacks, I began to see how fragile life is and how vulnerable our way of life can be. I started thinking about school, and my endless changing of majors, and I decided that it was time to focus on something in particular. I picked sports management, and I threw myself headfirst into classes, afterschool events, and marketing opportunities. In the early months of 2002 I worked at the NBA All Star weekend in Philadelphia, then made contacts that lead me to a job interview with the NBA. As soon as I graduated with my Bachelors degree I was planning to work in the marketing department of the NBA. My life was beginning to take shape.
Then came the day in mid march that truly changed my life. After all of my hard work in school, I rewarded myself with a trip to the beach with my best friend Kristina. It was a day filled with sun and sand, laughter and relaxation, and a killer rip current. We were sitting on the beach when we noticed the crowd gathered around a spot about a quarter of a mile away. I stood on the tailgate of Kristina’s truck and saw a man lying lifeless on the beach.
I don’t remember much of what happened, but I do know that I knew I had to get to that man. I sprinted down the beach to where he was, realizing quickly that he was not breathing and did not have a pulse. He was foaming at the mouth, and I knew that he was a drowning victim. Seven years of lifeguard training took over, and I began CPR on the man. I continued until the police arrived, and the ambulance, and while the paramedics tried to shock the man I stood and watched, mesmerized. They loaded him into the ambulance, and left for the hospital. And his young daughter stood by and watched, asking me “Is Daddy going to be okay?” I didn’t know what to tell her.
The man later died, I learned. Kristina and I left the beach , pulling over twice for me to vomit on the ride home. I was sick over it. The phone call came from the man’s friend, informing me that he had been put on life support at the hospital until his wife could get there to say goodbye. Suddenly everything I knew to be real was turned around, and the path I laid out seemed so silly. I was going to work for marketing for a sport where the players make millions of dollars for playing a game. It seemed so superficial, so inconsequential. I knew that God had put me on Earth to do something more, I just didn’t know what that something more was.
I missed two days of classes trying to sort something out. I still couldn’t shake the memory of that little girl watching the ambulance bounce down the beach, carrying her father and her looking at me, asking if he would be okay. It haunted me. I felt like I was carrying the ghost of that man with me until I decided how I could honor him. On the third day of missed classes, my favorite professor called me into his office. I told him what had happened, and how I was trying to sort through it all. And he gave me the advice that changed my life.
He sent me away. He told me to leave Gainesville, leave Florida even, and I would figure out what I was meant to contribute here. He mentioned ocean rescue, a great summer job opportunity that could take what I already knew and turn it into a lucrative summer job outside of Florida. I did a web search for ocean rescue jobs, and found several on the Eastern Seaboard. But it was the job in Corolla, North Carolina on the Outer Banks that called my name.
Six weeks later I loaded most of my belongings into my car, and drove to North Carolina for my tryout. I had been training for the rigorous physical testing for the past six weeks, but I wasn’t certain that I would be able to make it under the desired times. I passed the swimming well under the time limit, but was a minute over the mile run along the beach that came right after the swim. In my heart I knew that this was what I was meant to do, so I practiced every day for a week, and the day of the next tryout a week later I was thirty seconds under the time. I knew that if I put my mind and my heart into it, I would succeed. I was finally being challenged and getting an opportunity to prove myself in ways that school and social life never had.
I lived in a house one block from the ocean and left all of the frivolities behind. I lived without a good cell phone signal, without convenient internet access, without my friends and my family. I shared a small bedroom with another lifeguard, and lived in a beach house with 20 other lifeguards. I made friends that were like family to me for that summer, and I physically challenged myself each and every day. And that was where I learned who I was meant to be.
As a lifeguard I worked for the fire department. And I watched as the tones went off, the bay doors went up, and the trucks responded to those who needed them. There were no biases, no judgments, just people helping people. My heart told me that this was who I was meant to become. A paramedic firefighter. I was meant to help those who needed me by showing up at their most desperate hour and being there for them. I knew nothing of the training or the education I would need, but I knew that this was the path that God had laid out for me.
At the conclusion of the summer I packed my things back into my car, kissed my summer boyfriend goodbye, and drove back to Gainesville a wiser woman. No longer was I the lost child who didn’t know who she was and what she was to become, but that summer away taught me that I was incredibly strong both physically and emotionally, and that if it was something I wanted badly enough I could make it happen. My parents certainly didn’t understand why I was willing to throw away 4 years of a college education and a job with the NBA to become a blue collar worker, but I knew that this was my calling.
I enrolled in the first EMT class I could and finished at the top of my class. I then attended Paramedic school and again graduated with honors. Every spare second I had I spent volunteering with the local fire departments, immersing myself in learning everything I could about fire rescue. I then went to fire school and spent the most grueling twelve weeks of my life dirty, sore, and burned. It was funny to think that just a year previously I had been the prissy girl who got weekly manicures and didn’t leave the house without makeup. The day I graduated from fire school was proudest day in my life. I remember thinking that all of the hard work and pain was worth it, and I had proven to myself and everyone else that I could really do something if I set my mind to it.
Fast forward five years and I am now a Lieutenant with the County’s fire department. I get to help those who need me, and I have truly achieved my dreams. Not a day goes by that I don’t remember that man who had to unfortunately lose his life for me to realize the potential of mine.
This is who I am, and how I got here. Now I am a wife, and a mother, and I look forward to the days when Madalyn begins to want to challenge herself, and when she looks at the world of opportunities that lay before her. I hope that she will say to herself at that time "wow if my Mom made it as a firefighter, I can do absolutely anything." I hope, if nothing else, that I can teach my daughter to be a strong, independent woman, as my mother taught me.