Every moment has meaning but some are far more important than others; some effect the very thread of our lives. Life is filled with moments of joy and happiness, and mixed with sadness and tragedy. Happy memories can be remembered but may appear vague, while the tragic ones can be crystal clear as if it happened yesterday. My memory is the one that I can remember so vividly.

After swearing the year before that I had never broken any bones, one Saturday in the late morning broke that fact. It was the first Saturday of May in the end of my Seventh Grade year. I was playing basketball for my MAYB team and unprepared was an understatement on how prepared we truly were. With the simple mindset that I could just wing the running part and lack of practice was quickly gone. As the buzzer indicated the start of the game my body was nowhere near ready for what was to come.

After about 12 minutes of running non-stop and hard hits to the floor, my breathing became labored. While sneaking a quick break into a play, I accidentally took my eyes off of the ball for one second and the next thing I knew the ball was stolen. Once I realized that I was the closest one to the ball I went into a full on sprint down to the other end of the court. Once I caught up to the girl, she went up for a layup and without thinking I jumped up to block it. Do you ever have those moments that were only a couple seconds but to you they felt like it lasted a lifetime, well that was that moment for me. After what felt like ages I finally landed into the bleachers full force. Once I opened my eyes and attempted to assess what had just happened, it all came back to me and people rushed toward me at full force. I felt no pain but I was traumatized.

I didn’t truly know that I had torn my ACL until my dad helped me off the court and I tried to walk it off, which only resulted in the first amount of pain that I had felt that day.
That day will always stay wedged in my mind because it changed my life dramatically. At the time I thought it was the end of my world, but as time went on I realized that it was really a blessing in disguise. The only reason being is because if I had never torn my ACL I would have never discovered my love for music and I would never had realized that I didn’t have to spend my life under the influence of angry coaches that would only put me down. While this trial did cause me pain and sorrow, in the end I found my smile and my voice and in my opinion that is all that really matters.