I wish this was a story about perseverance, about not quitting no matter how rough the water got. Most of all, I wish that my gymnastics career did not end the way it did. Like any other dedicated athlete I began my journey in gymnastics when I was a little kid. I quickly fell in love with the feeling of being weightless, of being able to do things other kids couldn’t. The team coaches at my gym quickly realized the potential I had, and I joined the competitive gymnastics team in 5th grade. What they don’t advertise about gymnastics however, is the extreme and inevitable mental and physical tolls that are slowly chipped away from your body, until there is nothing left. 

During warmup for one of the biggest invitational meets of my junior year, I had a nasty landing out of a double turn, and my left ankle snapped as I landed. Everything went quiet around me as I stood up, realizing I could not put weight on my ankle. I hopped off the floor by jumping on my right ankle, keeping the weight off the injured one. My mind was spinning a thousand miles a minute as my coaches and trainers rushed over to comfort me as tears began to fall. This incident marked three serious ankle injuries, each from gymnastics. I had told myself going into this season that if I had one more injury during my career, I would be done; I would have to be. It was too difficult and draining both mentally and physically to come back from the first two injuries. I didn’t feel like doing that again. The trainer told me at the meet I had suffered a grade three sprain to my left ankle. I knew how difficult it was to regain strength in an ankle after a serious sprain like that, and was unsure what the rest of my season, let alone my career, looked like at that point. 

With tears still streaming down my rosy red cheeks and an ice pack rested against my ankle, my teammates began to come over to comfort me. I learned that not only did I hear my ankle snap when I landed, but so did my teammates… who were on the other side of an extremely loud gymnasium. The thought of that made me shudder, and I realized that this was a more serious injury than I thought. I scratched my events for that meet, a meet I had waited all season to compete at, and stayed the rest of the meet to cheer on my teammates despite desperately wanting to go home to cry in my bed over a feeling I knew all too well. My season was over, and I didn’t know what the future of my gymnastics career looked like. 

On the bus ride home, I called my physical therapist- who I practically had on speed dial by this point- and got an appointment for the next morning to try to make my recovery process as quick as possible. I had told myself after my second injury that one more would put me out for the rest of my career, but I was determined to compete one more time before the end of my junior season. 

I was able to regain some strength in my ankle to secure a spot in the bars lineup at conference, but I felt alone, I felt destroyed, I felt broken, and I didn’t start training again after season had ended. I gave myself some distance between myself and the sport. And that’s where I am right now, tugged between the sport that had become my home or putting myself first. I realize now that I’ve had some distance that maybe being a gymnast my entire life I never learned to put myself first. My team always came first for me. But that is what I am determined to learn to do now, put myself first.