"The Injury" by Carter C

            It was June 2013, my family and I were on our annual vacation to Pacific Beach, joyous as could be.  My older brother and I rushed down to the beach with our skim boards excited to experience the thrill of riding again. My brother threw his board across the water, began chasing it and planted himself firmly in the center as he began gliding across the water with great speed.  Then, without warning, the board went over a patch of seaweed, bounced off the ground and sliced into his Achilles tendon.  He instantly fell to the ground with a hard thud and blood began to spew from his ankle.  Filled with panic, my family and I rushed him to the emergency room where we discovered surgery would be necessary to repair his severed Achilles.  Over the course of the next nine months, I watched him battle and fight through depression as he lost all of the things he worked so hard for.  I thought I would never be able to understand that level of pain; however, I was sadly mistaken.

            Fast forward about a year from my brother’s injury.  It was June 2014, just coming out of my freshman year, my parents, little sister and I decided to head out to Huntington Beach for the day.  I walked past my brother’s skim board, picked it up and packed it in the car.  My mother looked at me grimly and said, “Carter you know what happened to your brother, do you really want to risk that?”  I confidently responded with, “Mom that was a one in a million type of thing; that won’t happen to me.”  I felt immune to any injury and was completely oblivious to what was going to occur.  When we arrived at the beach, I set my towel down and immediately rushed down to the water.  The tide was perfect; the sky was crystal clear, and there was a refreshing ocean breeze.  I thought to myself, what could go wrong?  After I got a few rides in, I remember having a quick flash back to what had happened to my brother.  I quickly put it in the back of my mind, avoiding the obvious warnings.  I threw the board down forcefully and sprinted after it.  I landed directly in the center of the board and was flying across the water.  I slightly shifted my feet and began to perform a trick, when the board hit the ground awkwardly and sliced through the air like a knife and hit me a few inches above my heel.  The color drained from my face, and I hopped to my parents on my good leg.  I could not muster up the courage to look at my wound and my parents rushed me to the emergency room.  When I was finally seen by the doctor, we were told that I had only partially torn my Achilles tendon and that the wound could be stitched up without surgery.  This was supposed to be good news, only a couple months to recover and I’d be as good as new.  However, at the time, I was extremely dedicated in my baseball career.  I would miss my entire summer season and would just barely recover when high school season would start up again.  I had to lie in my bed all summer, doing nothing, while all of my teammates were improving their skills and becoming stronger.  I began to get depressed and soon lost all of my passion for the sport that used to mean everything to me.  I was lost and confused on where I was going to end up and what I was going to do.

            During this time, my brother was just finishing up his physical therapy to come back from his injury.  He saw that I was going down a similar path and pulled me aside and talked to me.  He didn’t say much but asked me to just go to the gym with him.  I reluctantly agreed and remembered feeling very nervous as we stepped into Fitness 19.  After the first workout, I was exhausted and in excruciating pain, but I had never felt better in my life.  I immediately adopted a new found love for fitness and became obsessed with building a greater version of myself. 

            Going through this injury was one of the hardest times of my life, but I am so grateful for the lessons I have learned from it.  Tearing my Achilles taught me that setbacks are only temporary and that they do not define you. There are times in your life that you need to take a step back, dig deep, and build bigger, stronger roots because this will lead you to better things in the future.  It has taught me to never give up in anything that I do and to always persevere in order to achieve my goals.  Most importantly; however, it has taught me that I should always listen to my mother, even when I do not agree with her.