The Struggle: The Past
I’m from Birmingham, Alabama and I’ve been here all my life. I have three siblings, an eleven year old brother, a fifteen year old sister, and a five year old sister. Of course I have to be the oldest which sucks a lot. I’m a very competitive guy, especially in sports, and I love to compete to the fullest. I played football starting when I was 11 years old up until last year. I miss it because it gave me a chance to play the sport I love to play. A lot of people can tell you how much I love sports just because I’m always playing one. Even though I love to play music, sports is just about tied up with music. As a lot of people would say I am a very musically talented person, and it just shows who I am. Whenever my dad has to go to a church to preach, it gives me the opportunity to basically showcase my talents while he preaches. I never thought you could get hurt playing music until one day I was at marching band practice. It was a warm, Spring evening after school, and we were practicing for a competition we had coming up, and we were doing a visual that required using our legs in a certain way. When I did the visual, I felt something inside of my knee that didn’t feel right. I just brushed it off, but after practice was over with, I started to feel pain while going up the stairs. The pain was in the front of my knee and I was kind of confused on why it was hurting. I also ran track in high school and it consisted of a lot of injuries to my legs. I tore my hamstring in my right leg, I tore my quad in my left leg, and I also have tendonitis in my left ankle which caused me not to run at all my freshman year. I had a rough time in high school with injuries all because my legs just aren’t flexible and my hamstrings are as tight as an eyebeam. The Present I went to Hoover High School, which is the biggest and best high school in Alabama, and I did marching band and also played football my senior year. It felt amazing just to do football and be apart of something great. A lot of people would ask me, “How did you play football and march in the band at the same time?” Well, during the cool winter mornings, we practiced in the morning time and we didn’t have marching band after school during this time. This gave me a lot of free time to basically try and get better at the workouts we did during practice. When the warm spring air came around, this is when we started to work out in the morning and go outside after school to have actual practice. This is when it became fun because I used to be a wide receiver and running routes was the best thing to do out there. During this time of the season when we were lifting weights, I started to feel that pain in my knee again, and it hurt even more. I went to the trainer and they looked at it and of course it was swollen. I started wearing a knee brace and icing it to see if that would help but it didn’t. So, I was scheduled to go see an Orthopedic doctor to see what was going on. I got an X-Ray and nothing was there, then I got a Steroid Shot and it helped for a while, and then they proceeded to give me an MRI. After I received the news about the MRI, they said that I had torn my Patellar Tendon and it was pretty swollen. After that, they only had a few options left and they were to either get another Steroid Shot, surgery, or a PCP shot, which is very expensive but doesn’t work every time. I went ahead and proceeded with the Steroid shot and hoped that my knee would get better. While all of this is going on, summer rolls around and my summer wasn’t a good one. I got a text from my grandmother saying my Uncle had passed away. I was hurt and didn’t know what to say about it. I just felt my heart drop when I received the news about his passing, and it brought tears to my eyes to the point where I just sat in my room for a while just thinking about him. The following week on June 25, 2018, I received some news about something that I never thought would happen to me. I was at my cousin’s house for his birthday party and I spent the weekend with him. After the party was over, I got a very disturbing call from my mother that our house was on fire. I was in shock and just couldn’t believe the news I had just heard. For the rest of the night, it just stayed on my mind and I tried my best to fall asleep. I had been stressing about my Uncle’s passing and now this. I went to practice and let my coaches know what happened and that I had been going through a lot at home. I lost sleep over it and I was just constantly thinking about how this happened and why it had to happen to me. When I went to practice that following morning, I was not in a good mood at all. I didn’t perform at practice well all because of the thoughts that were running through my mind. I walked up to my coach and I told him that my uncle had passed and that my house caught on fire. As I said my uncle had passed, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I just let them out and my coach told me that it’ll be okay and that we all have to leave at some point in our lives. I kept my head up and finished practice out that day and didn’t let it affect me anymore. As the Summer came to a close and Fall came to a start, I was still feeling a lot of pain in my knee. I went back to the Orthopedic and he told me that I only have two options left and it’s surgery or the PCP shot. I waited and thought very hard about it and I went ahead and told him that I’ll get the surgery. The surgery was a debridement surgery, which is when they go in on one side of your knee and insert a camera and then on the other side they go in and clean up and debrief they find in there. I had the surgery when the season started and it was a very tough time for me and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t show up to practice for a while and turns out that I was removed from the team. The surgery was a well needed surgery, but it came with some negatives in my life. I hadn’t been at practice for a while and I told my coach why I hadn’t been at practice and he told me to talk to him after the first game to let him think about it. He thought about it and decided to let me off the team and at that point in my life, I had given up all hope. I’m not completely sure why he told my band director that I had been removed from the team, but when I was told that I was let off the team. Despite all of the battles I had to deal with, I kept my head up and didn’t let any of that bring me down. Never give up on your dreams and always strive to be the best that you can be because in the long run it’ll get you where you want to be.
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