Chapter 2 — Caring for Others

I had chosen healthcare.

But choosing a direction and knowing exactly where it will lead are two very different things.

When I entered the École de culture générale—the ECG—I only spent one year there.

Before that, I had spent four years at collège.

Four years trying to stay on a path that, in the end, had led me nowhere.

At least, that was how it felt at the time.

Four years thrown away.

So when I arrived at the ECG, I found myself almost immediately facing that famous question again:

What are you going to do now?

With an ECG diploma, there were possibilities, but they weren’t endless. I had to choose between looking for vocational training, pursuing a CFC apprenticeship, continuing toward a specialized maturité, or trying to enter another school afterward.

I had chosen the healthcare track.

So naturally—or perhaps because the path was still being drawn around me—the next step seemed obvious.

I wasn’t going to become a doctor.

That door had closed.

So maybe a nurse.

This time, the profession had changed, but the pressure around me still felt very familiar.

For my mother especially, I needed to stay in healthcare.

Pastry?

There was no point in that.

Something else?

Why, when there was a serious, stable, useful path available?

Healthcare.

Nursing.

So I tried.

Again.

I applied for a specialized maturité so that I could continue on to nursing school.

And it didn’t work.

I didn’t make it.

Another failure.

By then, the word was beginning to feel familiar.

Collège hadn’t worked out.

Pastry hadn’t worked out.

And now, neither had the specialized maturité.

At that age, every door that closes can easily make you feel as though the problem must be you.

As though everyone else is moving forward while you are still trying to figure out where to go.

As though you should already know.

As though you should have found your place by now.

I was still searching.

I had to find something.

A training program.

A profession.

Another way forward.

It was during this period of my life that a man entered my story.

Of course, I didn’t know it yet, but he would remain in it for eight years.

He will appear often throughout these pages.

Not only because he was my partner for a large part of my adult life, but because he was there during many of the moments when that life was taking shape.

And at that particular moment, when I no longer knew which door to knock on, he was the one who encouraged me to ask for help.

At the Versoix town hall.

The idea was simple:

Go and see. Explain your situation. Maybe they’ll know where to guide you.

So I went.

And sometimes, the decisions that change a life begin far less dramatically than we might imagine.

No revelation.

No sudden calling.

No great inner voice telling me that I had finally found my place.

Just someone sitting behind a desk telling me about a profession.

Assistante en soins et santé communautaire.

ASSC.

A healthcare assistant.

They suggested I start with an observation placement in an EMS, a residential care home.

To see the profession.

To see what everyday life looked like.

To see whether I might like it.

So I agreed.

I walked into that EMS without really knowing what I would find there.

Elderly people.

Care.

Tasks I didn’t yet know how to perform.

Stories sometimes told more than once.

People who needed help with things most of us do without even thinking about them.

And something strange happened.

I didn’t feel completely out of place there.

Quite the opposite.

It felt… natural.

I didn’t know the profession yet. I didn’t have the skills, the professional vocabulary, or the technical knowledge.

But being around people who were more vulnerable than I was didn’t feel unfamiliar.

Paying attention.

Observing.

Helping.

Listening.

Being there.

All of it felt strangely like something I already knew.

Long before that placement.

Long before the ECG.

Long before I even knew what the letters ASSC stood for.

I had grown up with the idea that you took care of those who needed you.

First, my little brother.

Then others.

What had begun as an almost instinctive responsibility in childhood was suddenly standing in front of me in the form of a profession.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel as though I was trying to force myself into a box.

I wasn’t trying to become a doctor.

I wasn’t trying to become a pastry chef anymore.

I wasn’t even trying to become a nurse.

I was simply there.

And I liked it.

Maybe all those closed doors hadn’t been time thrown away after all.

I wasn’t capable of seeing it that way yet.

At that moment, I only knew one thing:

I wanted to see where this door would lead me.

So I began my CFC apprenticeship as an assistante en soins et santé communautaire.

An ASSC.

A healthcare assistant.

Without knowing that one day, after spending years learning how to care for others, I would find myself on the other side.

In the bed.

With a hospital bracelet around my wrist.

Hoping that someone, in turn, would know how to take care of me.