Why Do THAT?
I swore to myself as I looked in the rear-view mirror. It was thrashing about on the road behind me, trying hopelessly to get up. It was horrible to watch and know that I had caused this, and the feeling of it bumping along below made me wince. I had braked as soon as it hit the bumper, but for some reason, the small roe deer had gone right underneath the car.
Had it got caught somehow?
Had I dragged it?
Bollocks.
I was driving my little hatchback on a remote and twisty road in Scotland. I had been pottering gently along and hoping I wouldn’t meet a big truck coming the other way, as it was a single-track road. I had not expected a deer to bound out into the road and its own demise. At this time, I was working as a commercial diver and was on my way to a job, so I had my diving gear in the back.
Feeling grim, I got out and opened the boot. I took out my big diving knife, which was a fearsome-looking tool. It was serrated on one side and with a razor-sharp edge on the other. What did I think I was going to do with it? I wasn’t thinking, just doing. I walked purposefully towards the fatally injured animal, knowing that I was about to make its day much worse but also knowing that, if left, it would die in slow agony unless it was given a quick death. I was being merciful.
But with that knife, seriously?
No!
I needed a less grisly idea.
Just as I was reconsidering my plan and hoping there was some other, more humane way, the poor creature was suddenly powered by a hormone-controlled flight response. Its instinctive survival drive was immediate. It leaped up and away, jinking fast into the trees and out of sight. I breathed out with relief. I knew the deer was dying, and it was probably now hiding in the undergrowth with its life ebbing away. Grateful to be saved from killing it myself, I put the knife back in my kit bag and carried on driving, but now with a heavy heart.
This event was a good metaphor for my life of questionable decisions, many of which were accompanied by adrenalin-fuelled action and guilt. It was never meant to be that way, according to how I had been brought up. I was expected to be something else entirely.
Not long after this small drama, I was standing alone in the heliport with my kit bag at my feet. I was realising a long-held ambition – to work as a diver at sea, specifically the North Sea, or ‘offshore’, as it is known to those who work there. I had got the job, but I felt uneasy. I had been in situations many a time where I was facing the start of a new path, knowing that it was too late to turn back. Not that I ever would turn back. The only way I knew was to go forward, even if it seemed unwise. And it seemed unwise to me at this moment.
I looked around and immediately spotted a small band of men, who I guessed were the dive team I was joining. I had been working as a diver long enough to recognise the type. Divers understandably exude confidence and swagger because, after all, the diver is doing a high-risk job, and it takes a certain calibre to do it. Seeing as I was also a diver and therefore supposed to have this same outlook, I had better face up to this immediate challenge. I pushed back on my acute feeling of cold feet and that little inner voice squeaking; you do not belong here.
Luckily, I had another inner voice hollering don’t be such a wuss. That voice was the loudest and the one I usually listened to.
Squaring my shoulders and straightening my stance, I casually walked over to them and said, “Hi, I think I am working with you on this job.”
One of them eyed me curiously.
“Are you the project engineer?” he asked.
This was, by then, a job more women were starting to do offshore.
“I’m on the dive team,” I said confidently.
There was a deafening silence as they considered this fact. I didn’t look like a diver to anyone.
Not for the first time, I inwardly faced their implied doubt. I could understand their reaction. After all, diving is a tough physical job where you need balls of steel to cope with claustrophobia, temperature extremes, exertion, discomfort, and sometimes danger. It is a job that mostly appeals to fearless types who have no problem working underwater. I could be competing for such a job with a six-foot ex-marine, and I knew that any boss would reasonably prefer the man. To get the work, I had to be focused, fit, and as strong as possible. I had the same drive as the men - to go after jobs and get paid. To me, there simply was no handicap in being female. However, when I wasn’t working, I would spend my time in the gym, pushing myself hard to stay as fit as possible. I needed to avoid being a weak link.
You may be asking, why diving? Why choose a job that was so hard to get into and so hard to do if you are not a six-foot ex-marine? It’s a good question and one which my family and friends also asked. They went a step further, saying, you will fail, and you will never be hired to do such work.
They were certain about that.
But I was used to people making such comments. Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, it was quite normal to tell girls and women what they shouldn’t be doing, as that was the culture then. I saw that the very fabric of society was enabling our segregation as females. I inwardly despised this setup, viewing it as a societal cage in which females could be kept away from the life of choice and opportunity that males had. Instinctively, I felt the need to break out of this cage. I did not see any reason why I should not have what the boys and men had in the way of freedom and fun jobs. I deserved a bite of that apple, even at the risk of only achieving a tiny nibble. It was my risk to take and my desire to tear down the barriers surrounding me. It is hard to know why I was like this, especially as my academic parents were quite risk averse and afraid for me in every sense. They did not see my world as a cage but instead as a safe and direct road. In their view, I would be safe if I did not stray off that road.
People often try to escape from things. My own story of escape started when I was trying to evade the ongoing pressure to succeed. We are often expected to succeed in life… to do well at school, be sporty, be attractive, get a good job, marry a nice partner and have kids, buy a house, and so on. All this was expected of me, and why not? I was given an education, and it was taken for granted that I would end up in a befitting profession. They hadn’t banked on my discontent from such pressure, which upended their dreams of my success.
I generally felt outside the pack and was unconcerned about it. My mother constantly fretted over my safety because I was alone. In contrast, I saw my being alone as fundamental freedom, most importantly financial freedom. I learned to look after myself rather than expect anyone else to protect or control me. I wanted to choose my own path. Choice needs freedom, which needs financial independence. I often had to face the harsh consequences of my choices, as that is part of the deal when one is free. I considered myself lucky because I had the luxury (and it is a luxury) of choice. Not everyone has it.
Ultimately, I was seeking job satisfaction, and I made everything harder for myself because I was chasing jobs that I had been brought up not to do. I had a simple goal - to get work that I chose.
I certainly did not care about what I may be missing. I was not materialistic, and I didn’t need to settle down or have a social life. I was restless and independent. I needed no one.
It did occur to me that my situation was a question of the chicken or the egg? Was I a loner because of the nature of my endless moving around the country for work and the work itself, or was I attracted to that kind of work because I was a loner in the first place? I decided it must be both chicken and egg….
I did not become a diver straight away because I had no knowledge of it. In my respectable middle-class life at that time, no one ever discussed careers like diving or working at sea. Unbeknownst to me, there was a fascinating world of technology, offshore oil and gas rigs, supply and service vessels, construction vessels, oil well intervention vessels, tugs, tankers, helicopters, and more. This world was supported by many onshore service companies, from catering to transport. All this provided jobs that I would never be told about. Where I was from, this world apparently did not exist. Yet we were all using the end products.
For girls especially, it would have been laughable to even ask about how to get work on an oil rig, for example. Someone would have said, don’t be silly, it’s not for girls, and that would be an end to it. Commercial diving was another world from the cosseted one I grew up in and as hard to get to as the moon. The way I discovered it was quite accidentally…
Most people find themselves in surprising situations from time to time. Situations that may make them wonder how they arrived at that place. Usually, it is because we make certain decisions and keep moving onward. We may encounter problems and try to navigate around them, learning as we go.
“But that is life!” I hear you shout.
Yes, it is, and we all have unique experiences along the way. I like to think it is possible for anyone to take a chance to follow their own dreams and goals. In my case, I was the very least likely to have followed the paths I took, but I took those paths with hope in my heart. Some of them led to singular experiences and even love, whereas others led to anguish and isolation.
It takes courage and determination to live a life that everyone else is trying to dissuade you from. In the case of my parents, they naturally wanted to protect me from what they envisaged as real peril, and they were fearful in a way that I was not. In the case of others, they just assumed I would fail because I was not someone who normally would do those jobs or have that life. People around me were uncomfortable with the notion of me, a girl, jumping out of my playpen into the boys’ one. No one ever really knows where the road will take us, and it is the unknown that scares some people but excites others. Sometimes they are the same thing.
I once saw a cartoon of an egg teetering on its thin little legs at the edge of the nest, and the parent bird saying, trust me, you’re not ready! But the egg has such strong self-belief that it will fly no matter how tough its flight may be.
