A word (or many) about leaving Tucson

(written Jan 14th, 2011)

Back at the end of September, I was discussing the circumstances of my stay in Tucson with a good friend of mine. I had graduated in May from UNC and had begun the process of putting in an application for Marine Officer Candidate School, projected to begin in October. I had moved to Tucson to live with my parents for the interim. My summer in Tucson was bleak. I spent a lot of time training, reading, and sleeping. It was a good way to decompress after finishing college, but it got old quickly. I felt as though my life had stalled; all I was doing was waiting for something to happen.

At the end of July I got my first indication that the one thing I had been counting on (my entrance to OCS in October) was going to fall through. My medical physical had been denied on the basis of the multiple stress fractures sustained during the course of my running career. I could get a waiver provided I had an orthopaedic examination, but it was just days before the selection board met to review and accept my application. With my medical approval outstanding, it was uncertain I would make it into the October class. Two weeks later, I received the news that I was indeed not selected for the October session due to my outstanding medical approval. I was going to have to wait until June for the next class open to females.

This was the second week of August. I had just spent 3 months bumming around my parents' house with no job and no social circle in a place I barely knew. Now that OCS wasn't happening, I was looking at spending the next 9 months in the exact same situation. I felt a lot of anger about what happened and a lot of anxiety about what was going to happen.

But I was lucky enough in life to have gone through my struggles (either real or merely perceived) with parents, teachers and friends who provided me with healthy attitudes about dealing with the tough stuff. My mantra became this: Shit happens; mourn it and move on.

A week later I got a hostessing job at a restaurant. By October I had a second job in a finance department for a hospital system. By the end of November I had plane tickets bought to France for a skiing holiday and to Ireland for this adventure. And by the time I left Tucson in March, I had more people to say goodbye to than I had time to say it.

It's a clichéd story: The Horatio Alger Triumph-Over-Tragedy/Pull-Yourself-Up-By-The-Bootstraps kind of tale. And I by no means make a good subject seeing as how I didn't start on the bottom of the ladder. Yet no matter how many times the story has been told or what the rung differential was, it's a story everyone ought to be narrating.

In order to start that narrative, you have to begin with the right outlook. Let's venture back to the first line of this entry. Back in September, I was telling my friend about how I wound up in Tucson. I was still in a state of mild self-pity at the disappointment of not make the October class for the Marine and instead making my income from a restaurant hostess job. It was at this point my friend remarked, "This was meant to happen; you were meant to be here." I was a beautiful sentiment, one which I still recall and appreciate, but it was wrong. In life, things don't happen for a reason: you have to make them happen for a reason. That is to say that we aren't fully in control of what events occur in our lifetime, but we are in control of our reactions to those events. Bad situations can be made better if we approach them with a positive attitude. To throw out one more clichéd maxim: Happy people don't have the best of everything; they make the best of everything. I channeled my strong emotions about my disappointment with the military into motivation to make a life in Tucson. My circumstances may not have been ideal back in September, but by the time I left, Tucson had become 9 of the best months of my life.

Now it's time to write the next chapter in the saga--The Epic Ireland Adventure! But before I launch into that, I'd like to thank everyone in Tucson for making my experience there so enjoyable. I'll always cherish my friends at Carondelet and Blanco, the times I spent with my family, the beauty of the desert, and the new perspectives everyone and everything provided me. I have been truly lucky.