Hurt

On October 1st, 2009, I went to cheerleading practice. To the squad's pleasant surprise, our brand new warm-up suits and sneakers came in that day. I took off my old shoes, and put on the brand new ones. They were Nikes, and they were so white that they made my old shoes (Kaeppas; comfortable, but several years old) look totally dull.

We had two new members that day. After we stretched, the coach talked to us as a squad. The previous day's practice hadn't gone well; a flyer had been dropped in a stunt, routines weren't clean, and we didn't listen. So on this day, everyone was assigned a  "goal" for the practice. Mine was to base three clean preps; one flyer on our squad was assigned to fly three clean liberties. The coach asked me to spot the liberties. I didn't know that spotting those liberties would send me to the hospital, but, when the flyer wobbled and fell, in an attempt to keep her from hitting the floor, my right knee buckled.

I didn't realize at first that anything was wrong. It was a second or two before I realized that something bad had happened, and another second or two before I realized I was in pain, and collapsed on the ground.

Turns out I had torn my ACL and lateral meniscus. Sounds fun, right? Well, it is if your definition is surgery that leaves you with a large scar on your knee, on crutches for a week, and in a knee brace for about a month.

I had surgery in December; almost exactly six months ago. I've been going to physical therapy every week, and working out at home as well.

But I'm still not where I was, and it frustrates me. Today at PT I did some jumping, and while I knew I had improved from even the previous week, I couldn't believe that something so simple- jumping onto a box far less than a foot off the ground- had taken me so long to learn how to do again. When I jumped for the first time, I was admittedly scared. But I couldn't help think, with some aching sadness, that once upon a time, I had done back flips on a trampoline, jumped off a balance beam, and had thrown- and caught- other girls in the air, and had done those without a terrible amount of fear.

I'm not going back to cheerleading again.There's no way my body could handle another cheerleading season, and frankly, even if it could, I'd be too scared too go back. I don't want to have to go through this- a trip to the ER, orthopedist appointments, surgery, physical therapy- again.

Making the official decision not to cheer again wasn't easy. On the one hand, when I made that decision, it was a sign of me becoming an adult, that I was putting my own best interest at heart; on the other hand, I also made the decision out of fear and worry, and so maybe it was a sign of weakness.

I don't plan on getting hurt again (nobody ever does, do they?), but before I even think about, say, taking a dance class again, I have to fully recover first.