It's game day, the best day of the week it's time to hit the locker rooms, suit up and prepare to go out and be the best player that you can be. To go out and win, to go out and play the sport you were born to play. Except it's not because one moment you're racing down the field on a breakaway about to score the winning goal, and then the next you wake up to your coach and teammates standing over you. And all you feel is confusion and you ask, "did we win?" There's no answer, just staring and then you hear sirens in the distance and you pass out again. It's the bottom of the seventh inning your team is down seven to six, there are two outs and one runner on base. This is it, this is the moment you've been waiting for your entire career, the moment you've been waiting for since you were a kid. The cheering, the sounds of fans, the glances to coach start to turn into beeping, ticking, hustling around, muffled voices whaling and whimpering, just then you hear a familiar voice in the distance, and it's the sound of that voice that makes you realize, that all of those moments could be gone forever.
It happens faster than the blink of an eye, all those years of training and practicing to be the best can be tarnished in one single moment. Getting an injury is one of the most painful, most grueling, most heartbreaking things to ever happen to an athlete, not just physically though. There is a huge mental component to it. Hell, I think the mental part is far more damaging than the physical. Bones heal, ligaments heal, but for some athletes, their mind never heals. For most, the year or even years they have to take off only makes them stronger both physically and mentally. You see getting an injury as an athlete you kind of go through the five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. When an athlete gets injured they have a risk of everything that they love being taken away, but those five stages make an athlete stronger and better than ever before.
I have this friend, we've known each other for almost five years now and she's hands down one of the bravest, strongest and most will powered people I have ever gotten the chance to know. She's a D1 athlete, a good one at that, but she has been through some stuff that has not only changed her a person but as an athlete. This woman tore her ACL twice within two years of each other, yet through both surgeries, she has never given up, and she's been so positive through it all. I actually called her the other day, to check in on her and she even told me that some days are rough, some days are harder than others but she knows that when she's ready to get back on that field that she'll be better than she ever has been.
On a more personal note, I had the sports I love the most taken away from me, just recently in fact and it messed me up, I went through all five stages of grief. However this has taught me what life really means, what is important to me, and it's teaching me to be a better person.
So if you're an athlete and you read this, take the recovery time keep fighting and keep staying strong I promise you it will be worth it.
