Imagine the worst pain you have ever felt in your life, think really hard. Something that made you want to scream your head off because maybe, just maybe, if you screamed loud enough, the pain would stop. Got it? Good, now times that by ten. That’s how I felt when I tore my ACL.

It was the first game of the season after a winter of endlessly practicing my skills. I was excited to get back on the field, and I was ready to win. The first five minutes of the game pass effortlessly and we score. Okay, don’t let up now. Stay focused, we still have a whole game to play, I think to myself. I know my team; if we start getting overconfident, we’ll let in a goal. That just motivates me more, I had something to prove. This season was going to be my season, my time to shine. I’ve gotten twenty times better than I was last year and I had to show everyone, including myself, what I was capable of.

The whistle blows. It’s halftime and we’re still up, but you can see the vengeance in the other team’s eyes.
“We’re starting to get sloppy out there,” my coach calls out to us. “I know we’re up, but 1-0 is never a good lead, they could get a crappy goal and then what? We’re tied. We need to stay on top of our game.” We chant our traditional team cheer and take our places. No chance in hell I’m losing this game. But as fate has it, the other team scores. It was a beautiful goal, a quick give and go and then a power shot from the eighteen. And to make things worse, there was only 3 minutes left. But my team had hearts of  lions. We immediately retaliated and had at least 3 shots in under a minute.

Then, the most horrifying moment of my life occurred. I shiver a bit when I try to recall the feelings I endured. It all happened so quickly.

My teammate gives me a through pass and while sprinting for it, I land on my foot wrong. A loud “Pop!” rings through my ears and I feel a strong pain rush through me like high school students rushing out of school on the last day. I try hard to contain my pain, but I can’t. I fall to the ground and start shrieking. For some odd reason, I can’t cry. The tears just don’t come but the pain is unbearable and all I could do in that moment is scream.

Everyone was in shock. One moment I’m perfectly fine, playing better than ever, and the next I’m on the ground screaming for help. My leg goes numb as someone picks me off of the ground and carries me over to the bench. I’ve stopped yelling now as the pain subsides, but the numbness stays. We walk over to a tent with a “First Aid” sign on it and I lay on a recliner as a man observes my knee and asks a few questions. He comes to the conclusion that I either hyperextended my knee or bruised it, but either way, I would be back playing in no time. Relief ran through my body as I was reassured that this was only a minor setback, but not long after that I found out that that was a lie.

Two months later, I’m sitting on the same black recliner but in a different place. I just finished what seemed like my one hundredth session with my physical therapist.

I received surgery in New York a month ago and was now working on getting my full range of motion back. However, there was a small drawback in my recovery process: half of the people who receive this surgery struggle to make their leg fully straight again. And of course, I was part of that 50%. I was working extra hard, coming in an extra day, staying an extra hour. But still my goal was not accomplished. It seemed impossible, and all the exercises I was doing to try to get my leg straight were just so painful. This action, which seemed so small and easy, was making a huge impact on my life since I couldn’t move onto bigger and better things until I was capable of this.

After yet another unsuccessful day, the tears finally came. I didn’t cry when I tore it, or when I received the news that I needed surgery, or even when I was getting prepped in the hospital, but now all the emotions from the last two months hit me. Before, I just thought this would be a challenge, a test, to see how strong I could be, but now I could really see how difficult this journey would be. And this was only the beginning.

Stop it. I thought to myself. You’ll get through this and everything will work out. But if you start to doubt yourself now, you’ll never be able to succeed. I wiped my tears on the back of my hand and decided that this moment would the first and last time I’d cry over this. Next session I will fight through the pain so I can move on, I told myself. And sure enough, the next time I attempted the challenge, I accomplished my goal and was able to straighten my knee and started walking without crutches.