I don’t know how I slept that night. I was lying face up on a hospital bed while the obnoxiously bright, artificial lights of the ER shone on my face. My hair was a mess, my track suit half on and my right ankle the size of a ripe grapefruit. I howled in pain as my mother bumped into it on her way to track down a doctor.

Again.

It isn't a funny story actually. I was playing in an off-season soccer tournament, and I had just been given a break away. It was just me, the ball, and the goalie; my favorite scenario. My vision tunneled, and the only thing I could focus on was my goal, literally. Suddenly, I felt force, my body slamming on the ground. When I looked down, my right ankle had decided to be at a right angle.

I have a high pain tolerance. I got my ears pierced at two and didn’t shed a tear, which is why, as I lay on the field clutching my ankle and thrashing like the professionals do on TV, I knew something was wrong. Before I knew it, I was in my father’s pickup truck and in the ER, hating my mother as she constantly kept bumping into my ankle as we awaited the doctor's verdict.

Torn ligaments. Rehab. No contact. Possible surgery. Out for the season. Who knows when you’ll be back? I’m sorry. Phrases like that were thrown at me from my doctor while I continued to stare at that wall with a blank expression. I felt like a lung had collapsed, like my ribs had snapped in half and one was jutting out of my chest. I had torn so many ligaments in my ankle it was being held together literally by a few strings. It was the summer before my senior year, the high time for recruitment.

I grew up with soccer. I’ve played since I was four-years-old, back when my cleats were Kmart brand, and I was afraid the ball would dent my forehead. Suddenly, all that was taken away from me. It was like a cop just pulled me over, and I had lost my driver’s license.

I hated every minute of my injury; all of a sudden, I was on the sidelines. I couldn’t enjoy the sport I had fallen in love with the way I used to anymore. It was like trying to reconcile with an estranged lover, but I knew this was something I loved. It was a part of me, and I wanted so desperately for it to be with me again.

Flash forward to now, here I am three years later ending my first collegiate season. I still have a while to go until I'm 100 percent the player I used to be, but I'm not stopping until I get there.

For my fellow athletes who had their season ending injury, this sounds cliche, but it gets better. You may feel like your time is ending and ineligibility is looming over you, but you'll recover and have the season that was taken away from you.

Even if it's career ending, you'll be OK. A wise coach once told me "the game is never really over". It's never really over until you say it's over — your sport is apart of you until the very end.