A Life Built From Detours

Like many of you, I thought I had planned my life out when I was a teenager. I wanted to be a nurse, find a man to marry, and have children. But roads tend to curve from plans that we made.

You may remember taking those tests in school that give you an idea of what you career you should consider going into. Mine almost always came back to nurse or teacher, every one of them through high school. I geared my entire high school education towards becoming a nurse. I took Latin, Advanced Biology, and the math classes I needed. I thought I am all set.

After a year in Brazil as an exchange student, where I also took nursing classes, I was accepted into a very new program at a university and hospital. The program ran for four years, and I would end up with a BSN in Nursing.

I started nursing school and made it through three years of a four-year program before I decided nursing just was not for me. We had not started on-hands nursing until our third year I so my decision to quit the program came late in the program.

Because I owed money for the school financing my education, I had to find a job that would help me pay it back. I had always wanted to join the military, so I went to a recruiter for the Navy and that day I was signed up.

When I walked into the recruiter’s office, I was asked what job I would like to do in the Navy. I told him anything but medical as I had enough of that between school and working at a nursing home. The recruiter went on asking me some personal questions about what I liked or what I could do. He got to the question about if I knew another language. Of course, I said yes as I knew Portuguese from my studies in Brazil.

He said great and had me take a test for my aptitude for languages. When I finished the test, I sat outside the room on a bench waiting for the recruiter to come take me back to his office. He asked me how I did and I replied, “That was difficult, so not too well.”

He said, “Let’s go back to my office and see how you did.” Once we returned to the office, he reviewed my score. He told me I was one of his highest scores. I was shocked. He then proceeded to ask me what language I would like to learn. I told him I would love to learn Spanish, as it was somewhat similar to Portuguese.

He then said to me, “Oh, no. You cannot learn that language, you scored too high. Your choices are Arabic, Chinese, or Russian.”

I thought about it for a few minutes and chose Russian. After that, I signed all the paperwork I needed to sign and headed back to my apartment. Now I had to tell my parents. Fortunately, they both took it well.

I had to leave in May to head to boot camp in Florida, and finish in August. My next duty station was Monterey, California, where I would learn Russian.

While in the Navy, I met my husband then became pregnant. The military allows you to chose if you want to stay in or opt out of the service when you are pregnant. Thinking about how many hours both her dad and I would be at work, our baby would not have known either of us, so I opted out.

After my husband left the Navy, we moved back east and both of us obtained jobs to help support us. Life seemed great. We didn’t argue, we both enjoyed the same activities, and our marriage seemed to be working out.

But that doesn’t last in many cases. After two years of moving east, my husband decided to abandon my daughter and me. No idea where he went, he just disappeared until a couple of years later.

When he returned, I told him I would give him one more chance, but if he left, I told him to just keep going. I believed in marriage, I just could not take him abandoning us again.

Two years later, he abandoned us again and he never came back. My daughter was devastated and became a very angry child, but that is another story.

Life went on and I dated here an there but no one seemed to be a good match until I found my future fiancé, M. My daughter and I bowled every weekend and on my team there was T, L, M, and me. For two years we bowled together. M was married but then his wife passed away. After that he asked me out and we were together from there.

I never thought I would find someone else that I could love but M was my soulmate. We were together for 13 years before he passed away from cancer. I vowed I would never date a man again. I just didn’t want to have to go through the dating portion, however, I did find a transgender woman that I fell in love with and that is who I am with now.

Other changes in the road I planned included my careers. Most of my careers were customer service related but I also taught adults, managed academics and a cosmetology school. However, in 2018, I was in a car accident where I became disabled from chronic migraines and fibromyalgia.

Conclusion

My road has been a long one and many forks along the way. You can plan and plan, but you cannot see the future and what it may bring. All of us will face forks in the road along the way. I imagine I still have forks to face but after many years I am ready to face those changes.