Every Main Character has an origin story whether we like it or not – while some may have similarities, each one is unique with its own mix of heroes, villains and a whole lotta NPCs. Construction Girl’s origin story – how she went from a quiet, mild mannered and insecure small town kid without a purpose to the Main Character she’s become.
My name is Renee and I’m the human person or alter ego if you will of Construction Girl. I talk about Construction Girl in the third person because seeing her as a persona that could step in and do the hard thing allowed me as Renee to gain the confidence to push forward.
As with every origin story cliché – this one starts with a traumatic event – which in this case was the catastrophic implosion and collapse of an abusive, toxic relationship. While I didn’t have visible physical scars – the scorched earth approach the ex chose when it came to emotional, mental and financial abuse left pervasive wounds.
The one thing I had left was my job in the end – I was a site clerk on a downtown construction site. It had started as a temp job that became a salaried position a few months before the break up (side note – my salary being $2k higher than my exes was one of the catalysts of the breakup). Not only did I like my job, I felt a certain amount of comfort being on site which I leaned into through the breakup.
That comfort and my capacity to do the job were embers that kept me going during that darkness. And after I helped secure the closure of Yonge Street on a weekend to install a crane, those embers shot off a spark to, in the shyest way possible, ask if I could come watch the crane go up on the weekend (if it wasn’t too much trouble). My Project Manager’s response was to hand me a hardhat and say ‘knock yourself out’.
So there I was standing in my first hard hat smack in the middle of Yonge Street listening to the guys nervously chatter about the position of the dancing beer can on the billboard across the street as the boom of the crane did its first test swing around. I held my breath with them as it approached the billboard and shared in that collective sigh of relief as it cleared it with room to spare. It was in that moment, as part of a shared experience while everything else was standing still around us that Construction Girl was born.
Much like a lot of heroes, Construction Girl had to accept and grow into her power – come on “traumatized girl has cool experience and immediately becomes rockstar” is glib and simplistic. Yes, I do wish it had been that simple. Yes, I do wish sometimes that on that day in the middle of Yonge Street in that moment where I felt myself falling in love with construction a well lit, smooth path with arrows appeared for me to follow along.
The reality was, there was no magical path and if there had been I wasn’t ready to follow it. I had a job that felt comfortable and didn’t suck; sometimes I even thought I was good at it. What I also had was a whole lot of unprocessed trauma that spawned our first two villains – Self Doubt and Self Sabotage (they’re twins).
So a year or so later when that job ended and I was laid off – rather than take another job in the industry that was offered to me, I ran away. The next few years I stumbled along without much direction or purpose beyond trying my best to self-destruct whenever the opportunity presented itself. I was an NPC in my own story.
After a heavy dose of tough love from concerned friends and family, I woke up and decided to at least try to actively participate in life. I found a therapist I trusted and began the hard work to acknowledge, process and eventually start to heal. As I worked through the healing process and became an active participant in my own life again, I started seeing glimmers of potential.
As I moved out of the triage phase of healing, I got an unsolicited call from a temp agency for a role on a downtown construction site. Self Sabotage and Self Doubt turned down the first interview…and the second. When the agency called a third time begging me to just do one interview I begrudgingly agreed to ‘shut them up’ and told them to set up whatever appointment I needed at the agency for the same day as the interview on site so I wasn’t wasting my time. Full disclosure, I had nothing but time – I was unemployed doing freelance work to make ends meet.
I stuck to my “not interested” guns all through the meeting at the agency and even until I got to the front gates on site for my interview. As I walked through the gates into the paddock on site – I felt Construction Girl bolt awake and take over. The only thing I clearly remember from the interview was boldly stating – I’d be open to giving them a two week trial. I’d barely walked the five minutes to the subway when the temp agency called to tell me I had the job on a two week trial with the option to renew. Those two weeks came and went…until a few months later my contract once again was bought out as my construction manager teased me mercilessly about “how that two week trial was going”. So yeah, that’s how it started….
….And then I just started going….everything about being on a construction site fascinated me and I soaked up each molecule of information like a sponge. My curiosity was insatiable and I was fortunate that those early managers encouraged my asking about 48 billion questions. They tested my capacity and taught me the concept of bringing others along for the ride.
That foundation rebuilt my confidence, sense of purpose and as that all happened I started to see a future for myself. Flippantly I began referring to myself as “Construction Girl” – being the only girl on site early on meant I was now ‘the girl’ so I thought it was hilarious to correct the guys by saying “that’s construction girl to you”.