As a young 14-year-old brimming with passion and energy, I stepped out in my school football field and decided I wanted to play football for the rest of my life. Henceforth, all my effort was dedicated to becoming a professional footballer. After school hours, the team used to go to parks or random grounds to practice and improve our skills.
As people say, practice makes a man perfect, I followed these words and etched them into my heart. Finally, the efforts paid out, and I was selected for my school football team and was in the starting line-up too. This was the first tournament that I was participating in, filled with excitement made it very difficult to sleep the whole night before the opening match.
Luckily, with God’s grace, we won our first match and went on to win the tournament. This was just the beginning of my journey as a footballer. The year went by quickly, we played in many other tournaments and won various matches. Throughout school, we were cheered upon and regarded the best team in the school’s history. Personally, me being a defender on the school team, I was considered as one of the best defenders this school has ever seen.
Soon the next year rolled in, and the team was expecting a lot from me because of the departure of senior players. I was entrusted with the task of picking out new team members, the whole process went by smoothly, and soon the first tournament was about to begin. Just before the tournament, I suffered a serious injury, and upon arriving at the hospital, it was determined that I had a fracture in my pelvic bone.
This news shattered all my dreams as due to this injury I was on complete bed rest for three months, and I couldn’t even lift my body. After the injury healed, I had to learn how to walk again and how to run again. The whole rehabilitation process took about a year to complete.
Even though my leg healed, but I knew my dreams of playing football any longer are gone. The mental scars that this injury left took a long time to heal. During this period, I used to cry myself to sleep as I couldn’t even run. The people around me behaved differently. I noticed that the people who used to come over and talk to me stopped doing so all because I wasn’t important or famous in my school anymore.
As the months went by, I became more silent and stopped talking with anyone. I became a complete shut-in kind of person and dissatisfied with my life. After a year, I stepped back on the field still not completely healed, but I wanted to try at least, and, to my surprise, even though I wasn’t able to run as I was used to, I scored a goal on my very first try.
This gave me the boost I needed, and I soon realized either I can keep on sulking and complaining that life isn’t fair or pick myself, up dust and start working again. That’s what I did, I never gave up after that. At first, I went to the gym to strengthen my body and build up my muscles. Then I started practicing on my own and slowly but surely, got back to a level where I could play once again.
Though this whole process of recovering took up my whole school life, I’m proud of myself. I fought for my dreams and came back with a victory. Right now, I’m in college and once again one of the best defenders of the team. So there is always a happy ending in our life, we just don’t know during troubled time. Just let it pass and work on it.
