Confessions of a Failed Nurse and Future Rebel…

The Ones Who Didn’t Fit the Box…

When I was growing up in Ireland and I won’t say how many years ago because some of you might faint, it was a very different world to the one we’re in now. Back then, every family had a few solid ambitions for their children. You didn’t need a career advisor. You already knew what your options were.

If you were a girl, your family quietly hoped you’d become a nun. That way, you’d be ‘safe’ from the dangers of the world (translation: men, lipstick and notions) and you’d make the family look holy and respectable. If you were a boy, a priest was the golden ticket. Failing that, a good, steady civil servant job would do just fine. And of course, the really clever ones were shipped off to be doctors. Not because anyone wanted to save lives, no but because it made for excellent bragging rights at Sunday mass and the butcher’s counter.

Oh and let’s not forget nurse. The perfect fallback plan for any respectable girl who didn’t fancy the nunnery or wasn’t bright enough to be a doctor. Every family wanted a nurse in their ranks, someone to bandage up a knee or hold vigil at the sickbed, looking saintly and useful.

And then there was me.

I didn’t fit into any of those boxes. In fact, I was the one pointing at the boxes asking, ‘But why? Who built them? Who says we have to live in them’?‘

I questioned everything. I spoke when I wasn’t supposed to. I laughed too loud, climbed too many trees and made friends with people no one else would go near. I had opinions before it was fashionable for girls to have them.

There was a brief, desperate attempt to turn me into a nurse at one point – a last-ditch effort to make something ‘respectable’ of me. It didn’t last. Apparently, you’re not supposed to ask patients existential questions about the meaning of life while you’re changing their bandages or suggest that maybe their sore foot is a sign from the universe to slow down.

Who knew? So when that plan went up in smoke, the next best option was to hand the ambition down the line to my sister. And off she went in her crisp white uniform while I disappeared into the horizon, chasing the sun and a hundred other wild ideas.

For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought maybe my wires were crossed, that I was missing the gene that made people satisfied with what was expected of them. I watched other people slot neatly into the lives that were laid out for them like pews in a church, while I was standing outside, staring up at the sky, wondering what else was out there.

But do you know what? All these years later and after a fair share of life’s hard knocks, I’ve come to realize something. I wasn’t behind the others. I wasn’t lost or difficult or broken. I was ahead of the game.

I was the blueprint for the life that so many people are trying to claim for themselves now. A life that’s your own. A voice that questions. A soul that seeks. A refusal to be squeezed into a box because it makes other people comfortable.

And here’s the best part – if you’ve ever felt like you didn’t belong, like you weren’t ticking the right boxes, like you were somehow wrong for wanting something different, you’re not the problem. You’re the one with the eyes open. You’re the one who didn’t sleepwalk into a life you didn’t choose.

It might have been lonely at times, sure. You might have had the odd relative muttering that ‘there’s one in every family’ (and if you didn’t, chances are you were the one). But you’ve lived in a way that was yours and that’s a rare, precious thing.

Now when I look back, I laugh at the idea of me as a nun. I’d have been excommunicated within a week. I’d have started my own little underground society of rebellious sisters. We’d have brewed our own whiskey and hosted midnight debates on philosophy and whether angels actually existed.

So here’s to the misfits, the questioners, the ones who made people uncomfortable by simply being themselves. You were never meant to fit their boxes. You were meant to build your own world.

And to anyone who still feels like the odd one out, I’ll let you in on a secret: we’re the ones who get the best stories, the deepest lessons and the wildest laughs. It might not always be easy but it’s never, ever dull.

And as Granny Frass used to say, ‘Better a cracked pot than a dull one‘.

Sláinte to that.