I figure now is as good a time as any to share a bit of my situational backstory. After all, you’ll be seeing this very important in my life as we carry on in this tale of mine.
Freshly moved out of my parents’ house, I was a broke, borderline-manic mess renting a room from my aunt and uncle on a little Southern Gulf Island called Salt Spring. I was working as an apprentice hairstylist—arguably one of the most toxic jobs out there (we’ll touch on that later)—all while knowing, deep down, it wasn’t what I actually wanted to do with my life. Sure, I didn’t have the slightest clue what I did want to do for a living, but it was ingrained in me to get a trade under my belt—something to work while I figured out the answer to that daunting question, or better yet, while I was in school chasing the dream career.
After a few short months on the gorgeous island, I realized one late September day that I hadn’t seen the sun in a while. I loved the sun and the moon, and not seeing either for several days—sometimes weeks—was a serious downer. Especially for someone who already lived with a permanent case of the blues.
I asked my uncle, “Hey, so like… when do we get to see the sun again?”
He stood up from the flower bed he was working in, looked at his watch, looked at the sky, then looked at me and said, “Today’s Thursday, right? So… May.”
Yep. That settled it. I was outta there.
I rapidly started applying for work in the sunniest place I could think of in B.C. Within a month, I had moved to Kamloops before I even had a job lined up. Which—plot twist—I wasn’t going to find there anyway. I lived in a cute little apartment for an entire month before running out of money… and still no work in sight. Out of desperation, I applied for a job piloting oversized loads up in the oil patch of Northern B.C. Thanks to my past experience piloting for my dad, I landed the job in a day!
My new boss asked, “How soon can you be up here?”
It was Thursday.
I said, “I’ll be there Monday.”
And so I was.
Let’s recap: I went from having a home but no job… to a job and no home. Now I was in the frozen wilderness of B.C., didn’t know a soul, had sworn off men (my ex-boyfriends were short-lived losers who mostly distracted me from my chronic sadness), and I was still barely keeping my head above water fighting depression—though I’ll admit, the fear of starving or freezing to death was an excellent distraction. And no, I still had zero clue what I wanted to do with my life.
December 19, 2011. The day I met him. The man who stuck with me through the lows—and I’d love to say the highs, but let’s be real, they were more like “just-not-lows,” until I healed myself. Haha!
We met in the cafeteria shack—yes, a shack—of a rig camp in a place in the middle of no-where called July Lake. Don’t ask me why it’s called that, because the name suggests sunshine and sandals. It was -42°C and ALWAYS dark. (At least in the winter.)
I walked into the shack for dinner and could not, for the life of me, stop staring at this young man across the way. He was on the phone, fidgeting for some reason, and completely unaware that I was silently evaluating whether he might be my next big mistake—or, you know, husband material. I later learned he was on the phone with his father. He was fidgeting because he saw me and knew immediately. It was then he told his dad, “uh, Dad, I’ve got to go…I’m in trouble.”
After dinner, the truckers I had piloted, the other pilot car driver, and that same young man all ended up chit-chatting in the entryway. I caught him looking at me a few times and wondered if I’d ever see him again. For the time being, my crew and I were headed back to Fort Nelson.
That was the night Blake—my now dear husband—unhooked his tanker from the camp in record time, wearing nothing but a sweater (yes, still -42°C), just so he could run with our pilot convoy long enough to ask for my number… over public radio.
And yes, I gave it to him.
You could tell we were soulmates by the fact that, within a couple of short months, it already felt like we were married. We more or less acted like it—it just felt natural.
Note: I said natural, not necessarily easy.
We had our disagreements. I remember one particularly heated one about healthcare: the U.S. system vs. Canada’s so-called “socialist” version. I swore to him that if I had been born in the U.S., I probably would’ve died from asthma or bankrupted my parents from medical bills. Blake, on the other hand, was of the opinion that it shouldn’t be everyone’s burden to pay for the consequences of someone else’s bad health choices. His view was: you choose to smoke and get cancer? Sorry, that’s on you. But if you get hit by a bus—well then, poor sucker, we got you.
Now, I can see his point. But it begs a deeper philosophical question: was that person really “choosing” to smoke? Or was society pressuring them until he was addicted? And what about the guy who got hit by a bus—was he just not looking up? Is that his fault too?
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Both systems are deeply flawed, and both have their virtues.
But that, dear reader, is a rabbit hole I’d love for you to come down with me in a future post.
Until that post comes out. I welcome you to read my next post. 19 and Pregnant with a Fear of Hospitals. This is where you will see me challenge the doctors and the hospitals and prove how dangerous they generally are to give birth in. Enter the Midwives!
Much love in the light of the One Infinite Creator.
