I wrote this earlier today and was wondering if it's any good/what y'all think.
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I used to play softball. More than play softball, I ate, slept, and breathed it; every day I would wake up and think about softball, move through the day getting ready for practice, mentally preparing during class, envisioning the perfect catch, sneaking by the catcher last minute, stuff like that.
I carried this obsession with me to college, where I practiced from September to April, devoting hours of my time each week to team practices and even more for improving my skills on my own.
The only problem was, as I started settling into college, my mind began to wander from softball to other things. I would walk by my campus’ community action center thinking, “Wow! Those programs look so cool! Maybe I’ll do that when the season winds down.” In this office, program directors coordinated great volunteer projects like working in a local prison teaching prison inmates nonviolent communication skills, protecting the environment through picking up trash, tutoring at the local middle school, and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. I tried to be peripherally involved, but with softball and a rigorous academic schedule, I just didn’t have the time.
Since I didn’t have time, I did my best to ignore any additional inkling I had to pursue community service and focused on softball. All of my time spent with softball culminated in a spring break trip to Florida with my team, where we were to play half of our season in a week and a half. Spring break rolled around and I was excited for a chance to bond with my team and finally start my collegiate softball career. The week began and I did “the softball thing”: catching, running, jumping, throwing, batting, “softball stuff.” Things were going well, our team had won a few more games than expected and I was batting and fielding well. We entered our last game optimistic despite knowledge that our opponents were well known for being an overall strong team. The game progressed uneventfully, with a few hits on both sides. When it was my turn to bat, I approached the plate, swung my bat, and hit the ball. Immediately, I started to run toward first base, touching it and moving on toward second. My coach yelled, “Slide!” and so I did, preparing to touch second base.
Then, the big moment happened. As I slid into second base, I felt my ankle compress against the hard cleat of the opposing shortstop and heard a faint popping sound – the shortstop crumpled to the group beside me and I lay there, in shock, waiting for what would happen next.
What happened next, in short, was that I learned I had torn my ACL, the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee. What followed was a term of hobbling around, pretending I was healthy while unable to balance on my left foot or run. After this term of lethargy and inability to play the sport I loved, I returned to my home for surgery.
What ensued was an affair. Before the surgery, I had to sign all sort of papers clarifying that in the event of a mishap I wouldn’t sue. My entire left leg was numbed and I was given a sedative so everything felt kind of happy and far away. As I entered the operating room, I remember thinking, “It sure is cold in here.”
Hours later, I awoke and was driven home, where I was assigned the couch in my living room as a bed. This was to be my new living space for the two months, where I lay watching movies and listening to music in between naptime. For the first month, I was unable to walk without crutches, and just weeks after surgery I began the physical therapy exercises provided to me pre-surgery. These exercises were a welcome break from the monotony of staring into space and feeling too hot due to lack of air conditioning.
This monotony of being threw me headfirst into some serious soul searching. The inklings of desire to pursue community service I first felt in college rang louder and louder in my head as I continually asked myself, “What would I want to do, right now, if I could get up off this couch?” and found the answer to be, again and again, “I would pursue activities that connect me to the realities of the world around me.” I began to doubt my steadfast devotion to softball and the ways it deprived me of the full knowledge of the world. More importantly, I realized, it deprived me of my desire to learn more about the world and find ways to show how much I cared about the fates of others. After much thought, I decided. If that’s really what I wanted to pursue, I should pursue it, not softball. So I quit.
That decision was the most monumental one I’ve ever made. That may sound trite, but when I quit, my dad told me, “This is the most disappointing decision you have ever made.” But freeing up this time was essential for pursuing more altruistic, and frankly, interesting work, like service learning and volunteering.
There are many other moments that define who I am today. For example, my decision to work at my school’s Gender and Sexuality Center exposed me to the psychological dangers of institutionalized marginalization of LGBT people and survivors of sexual assault. My work with prison inmates through Alternatives to Violence Project has exposed me to the socioeconomic realities some must contend with, revealed to me the humanity in all people and exposed me to the importance of humility and honest compassion. My work with low-income middle school students has taught me that given support and sufficient resources, anyone can succeed. These projects are all vastly important to the development of my character. But without that one blip in my life, that one opportunity to reflect on who I was and who I wanted to be, I never would have had those opportunities, because I wouldn’t have had the time.
Years later, the scars remain and my knee still aches when it rains. My flexibility may never be where it was my first year of college and my right quadriceps may always be larger than my left one. Those three summer months between my first and second years of college were miserable and I would never want to relive them. But I would never want that time or energy back, given what I have received from tearing my ACL, ever. My work engaging with my community has provided opportunities softball never could have, and I have never looked back, not one single day, and regretted my decision to quit softball and start caring about the world around me.
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Honesty is appreciated. Thanks!
3 years ago
