Ten Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me
By: Gwen Saoirse
Tags: Lists, Fun Facts, Autobiographical, LGBTQ, Transgender

FOUR: I DID NOT FEAR DEATH UNTIL I HAD CHILDREN OF MY OWN

After puberty, I became absurdly reckless. Nothing was too dangerous. I had no intention of living beyond my early twenties. It never felt like I had a death wish per se, but I didn’t fear dying the way my peers did and I lived quite dangerously. More than a handful of people called me crazy and admitted that I often scared them.

My father spent the majority of my childhood remodelling the old farmhouse that figures prominently into these recollections. When a job required someone to scale the roof or do the high ladder work, I was always the first one up there and the last one down. On one particularly hot day on the roof, I got lightheaded, fell, and started sliding off the edge. Fortunately, I still had my claw hammer in my hand and caught the corner of a roof panel with it just before going off the three-story edge. I don’t remember being afraid at the time, just worried I would survive the fall only to be paralyzed for the rest of my life.

Once, just to prove that I could, drove my friend all the way home from the movies on the wrong side of the road. He lived in the country, twenty miles outside of town. I drove through town, out of town, and all the way out to his house on the wrong side of the road. If I hadn’t been driving so fast, he would have tried to jump out and take his chances on the landing. As it was, he screamed the entire car ride for me to stop and let him out of the car. I never counted how many cars I ran off onto the shoulder of the road that night, and I never flinched.

This wasn’t the craziest thing I did. Just one of many. It was bad enough that I put my life in jeopardy like that, but I’m deeply ashamed of how casually I put the lives of others at risk due to my behavior. The thing is, I remember doing those things and what I felt like, even what I was thinking then, but I can’t relate to that person that I used to be, not even in the slightest.

I remember when it all changed. I was helping a non-profit organization erect a climbing wall and zip-line obstacle course at their summer campground for their youth retreats. I clambered up the ladders and scaffolding with my toolbelt strapped on my waist, and the safety harness draped over one shoulder. Up and further up I climbed, and when I reached the top, I could see out well above the tree canopy of the surrounding forest, over sixty-five feet in the air. The gentle breeze made the scaffolding sway wildly back and forth, tied off only on the two of the four posts we would be building the wall on. I had never been afraid of heights before and didn’t think anything of it until I looked down.

I don’t know how long I stood there, clutching the bars of that scaffolding, frozen. I’m sure my eyes were as big as saucers. “You OK there, boss?”, the crew leader asked me. “You said you weren’t afraid of heights, but I wouldn’t know it looking at you right now. Everything alright?”

I don’t remember what I told him. I don’t remember how long it took me to unwrap my fingers from the bars, nor how long it took me to strap the safety harness on. Hooking my safety harness line onto the safety cables did nothing to relieve my fear of falling, not even one little bit.

What I do remember is that I couldn’t get my newborn daughter’s face out of my mind the entire time that I was up there working. It was at that moment I think I finally realized what it meant to have something to live for.