I've done my fair share of sports; I've had my fair share of injuries. If there's anything that all athletes could relate to, it's probably how much we break ourselves and keep going. Sometimes, however, we reach a point of no return, an injury that actually prevents us from moving forward. Sometimes we need a break to recover from our break. The journey back to where we were before is one of the hardest and worst journeys there is to take.

When an athlete hurts themselves to the point where they need to leave the sport temporarily, for one thing, it's just horribly discouraging. Here you are, stuck at the sidelines while everyone else just keeps going. And you know you could do it; you know how good you are at what you do. You're being pulled out of something you love because your body stopped working like it was supposed to. All of a sudden, you have thoughts popping into your head like, "am I too old for this already? Can I just no longer do what I've been able to do rather well for years?" and sadder ones like, "why can't I do it anymore? Why don't I work? What did I do wrong? Why do I deserve this?"

Besides how upsetting it is just to become injured (not to mention painful, since there's usually a pretty high pain threshold to break), the journey back to getting back into the same shape you were in after being off for far too long is physically and emotionally exhausting. You have to work your body back to its previous state, while still making sure you still take it easy on whatever it is that you messed up. Once you are finally in a suitable, though not ideal place, you have to go back from your team and see how much you've lost. You can't run that 800 as fast as you used to, you can't do as many turns as you're usually able to, you can't lift the same amount as before, your stamina is horribly diminished. You know it's because you were hurt, but it's still disappointing to not be up to your standard.

And perhaps the worst part of getting hurt in a sport and then coming back: you're scared. You're scared you won't be as good; you're scared you won't be able to do what you used to. And worst of all, you're scared you're going to get hurt again. That's the saddest part. You can't give it all you've got because going too hard may be too much for what you already injured. It takes all the fun out of something you used to love. There's more time spent stressing about what used to be instead of just pushing past it. A lot of times, coming back from a major injury takes all the fun out of something that used to be your pride and joy.

For the lucky ones, the injury doesn't bother them. They just push past whatever happened. But for a lot of people, myself included, the journey back from a break is one of the hardest things to do. A lot of times you'll just want to quit, and sometimes you just do. It ruins the sport for you. But you can always get past it. Sure, it may not be the same as before, but you're still doing what you love. There's still hope that things will get better. I always trust they will.