Choosing the crucible

I still remember the first time I felt like I wasn't who I was meant to be.

As a kid, I used to love playing dress-up and putting on little skits for my family with my brothers and cousins at various get-togethers. I would find an excuse to play a girl character. I loved wearing my Mom's old peach-coloured dress. I loved how it draped, flowed, and felt on my body. Playing feminine roles came with a sense of ease: as if my resting default was long hair, dresses, and traditionally feminine attributes. A default set in stark contrast to my firefighter father and rough-and-tumble brothers.

As a kid, I didn't have the words to describe how I felt in my body. I know them now: I'm transgender. Back then, I'd return to the peach dress for comfort.

I used to describe this feeling as being unmolded clay: I was being forced into shape by outside forces, seemingly without my input or desires in mind. In some ways, that's still true. We all are, in some ways, molded by the outside forces in our lives and environments. Turns out, the key is to be selective over which forces we allow to mold our metaphorical clay.

After years of being the passive recipient of change, of personal uncertainty, I knew I needed to choose my own crucible. I needed to choose a path: a familiar path, but one that was bold for me. The need for something with no ambiguity, with no doubt, finally became unavoidable. I selected firefighter training.

My time at Southwest Fire Academy, while relatively short at only 20 days, felt at times like a pressure cooker. I arrived with the expectation of unrelenting intensity. In that regard, I was not disappointed.

The tones dropped for our first consumption drill at 3 a.m. I was awake before I was conscious. We raced down to the apparatus floor, geared up, and worked. Hard. My lungs burned, my muscles ached, but as I lay on the floor in the hall clutching the low air alarm, I saw who I could be: a strong, reliable, resilient person. The uncertain kid with the goofy hair and peach dress could be a hero.

There's a version of yourself that only appears under pressure. Training is just learning to meet that person sooner.

Staring down the barrel of my upcoming interview, I'm aware that I'll be evaluated, assessed, pressed into shape by yet another outside force. The difference now is I know what I'm made of. The training continues to see to that. Twenty days of pressure revealed something the years of uncertainty couldn't: the clay had always had a form it wanted to take. I just needed to choose the right hands to help it get there.

My family's hands. My instructors'. And finally, my own.