For the past two weeks, I have not been able to walk up stairs. I had to learn the proper way to use crutches, and I had to learn how to walk normally again.

I tore my ACL and meniscus.

A few Wednesdays ago, I was playing the sport I have played since kindergarten: soccer. It was weird when I told people that I tore my ACL. Their eyes would do that weird thing where they became all soft, and they looked at me as if I was a dying girl. Then I realized why they did it; it was because when you tell someone you won’t be able to play sports for nine months, it really does seem brutal.

The hardest part wasn’t the pain because the first question people asked was “Does it hurt?” It wasn’t the pain that makes this experience so bad; it’s the things I have to miss out on. 

I’m scheduled for surgery on May 23, about three weeks from now, and I’ve never dreaded a date more. I won’t be able to fully move my leg for a week; I have to miss out on a camp I have been planning on going to for a year with all my best friends, and I can’t swim or tube all summer. It seemed like everything I had ever been looking forward to this summer has been ripped away, and to be quite honest, I’m quite devastated. I keep thinking, could my summer get any worse?

I always heard about people tearing their ACLs, but I never thought that one day I would be telling this scary story.

After being told that I can’t play sports for nine months, that meant sitting out my junior year of volleyball. I had to make a decision: did I want to continue playing soccer? If I continued to play, it would take a lot of physical therapy, and if I were to tear it again, that means sitting senior year volleyball out too.

I came to the conclusion to not play soccer again, even after 11 years. After tears have been shed over games, after many injuries, after hours of car rides, and after many different teams, I put away my cleats for the very first time, and I will forever miss it, but now, onto a new chapter of my life.

A new chapter of physical therapy, a new chapter of recovery, and a new chapter of rebuilding my strength.

Instead of viewing this as a defeat, I decided I would view it as an obstacle, just a little bump in the road that only takes nine months to fix.

Nine months…