If you were to ask me "what's the one thing people need to know about you?", I would not hesitate. I love dinosaurs. Love them! I always have, and I always will, although it pains me these days.
You see, when I was 4, I was introduced by my brother to the concept of giant creatures that lived 65 million years ago, monstrous mysterious beasts that roamed our earth long before any human. We read books, we watched movies, and before long I became obsessed with the idea of something so dangerous and so powerful being so elusive. How did they live? We don't know. How did they die? We don't know. It fascinated me. At the young age of four, I swore that I would grow up and be a paleontologist. I wanted to find fossils. I wanted to find dinosaurs.
All through school I held true. It was my true passion and my calling, and I never wavered from it. In my spare time I would conduct minor digs in my dirt driveway (I actually found quite a few shell fossils that way). I read textbooks and articles and conducted my own research. I memorized the dinosaur displays in our Natural History Museum, and would strike up conversations with visitors and share interesting facts.710Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ51vP4MvITV
When people would ask me what I wanted to do as a career, I would tell them: "I will be a paleontologist," my tone leaving no room for arguement.
How naive I was.
For you see, sometimes life has a way of pushing and pulling you in different directions. I longed to spend hours and days lying on the ground extracting fossils from bedrock, but everything that happened prevented me from doing that.
In 2014, I finally found a post secondary school that would accept me after my previous blunder at university. The school had a newly established undergraduate degree in vertebrate paleontology, and I was looking forward to taking courses that would help me reach my dream. I vowed I would study hard and celebrate my sucesses. Life had returned to me, and for the first time since my sister died, I dared to be happy.
Then, at the end of March, several months before I started school, I came down with a horrible affliction.
Costochondritis, it's called. An inflammation of the cartilage in the ribcage. Extremely painful and debilitating, the pain has been described as similar to a heart attack. I can believe it.
Normally, costochondritis will go away with adequate rest and treatment. Unfortunately for me, my regular doctor was away on sabbatical and the intern replacement had no idea what was wrong with me. Of course, there's no reason to let someone off work with mysterious pain, right?
I argued with doctors, and I begged work for time off. You see, my work consisted of lifting heavy boxes all day, and it was extraordinarily painful. They refused, of course, and without a doctor's note to back me up I was suffering day after day. After my shift I could do nothing but lie still in bed in agony.
By the time I saw a doctor who knew what I was suffering from, it was too late to help me. This pain had become a permanent, chronic part of my life.
And so, my dream of lying on my stomach for hours digging up dinosaur bones ended, replaced with despair. I could no longer do the physical requirements of the job. Of any job, really. I felt as though life itself was constantly trying to get in the way of my dream.
They say that when one door closes, another door opens. I went through an extremely depressive time as I watched everything I'd worked hard for crumble to dust. I had never considered the possibility of doing anything in my life except for paleontology. Nothing felt right.
Except for writing.
And so another door opened.
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