FN. Principle of Learning:
- Learning involves time and patience.
- Learning ultimately supports the well being of self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors.
2 things proud:
- Usually I struggle with detailing my narratives but with this one, I got it even more than what I was expecting.
- I didn’t get many mistakes on grammar.
2 things improve:
- Sentence fluency, using more semi colons, thanos, or fanboys, not only commas.
- Filter more what I write, I had a lot of dead wood.
Yin-Yang
Crack! What just happened? No, it can’t be broken. It can’t be. I’m fine, I can still play… Okay, that is hurting more than it should be. That was the moment I knew that something was wrong. Okay, let me come back a little bit. I’ve been preparing myself for the first game of the rugby season for a long time; I had been working out since November just to get in the shape, I didn’t miss a single practice since the first day, I was doing research about the sport… I was one hundred percent ready for that game. I was so excited about it that I invited all of my friends to watch; I wanted to do my best.
On a cloudy afternoon at the end of winter, there was me, the new girl in the rugby team, excited for the first game, training some passes on the field beforehand. I was just so joyful and full of energy; everything was going exactly how I planned. After the motivational talk with the coaches, the game started. To be honest, I was doing better than I thought I would; the good comments of the coaches were increasing my desire for a try (that’s how they call when you score in rugby). We were in the defense now; we followed the game plan forming a straight line so no one could pass through us to score. At the moment, we were wining for 15-0, but there was a huge hole in our line. The number 22 on the other team passed through. The girl was running to score; she was fast, but I knew I could catch her. It was only me and her, the other girls of my team couldn’t get there to help me in time; the distance between us was less than one meter. I wouldn’t let her score, not under my watch, so I jumped on her.
“Luise are you okay?” my coach asked
“Not really no”
I went off the field on the first 25 minutes in the first period. I wanted to cry, but all of my friends were there and my team was winning, I wouldn’t do that, not in that moment. The smell of the grass on my jersey, the cold ice on my shoulder, and the words that the doctor said, “You must rest for 3 weeks” were the result of my failure.
The constant pain felt like a huge weight was over my shoulder and made taking showers, eat and dressing, the hardest activities I could do. Being unable to do simple things was pissing me off. My entire life It had been drill in my head to be independent. Even my parents that are the ones who should be giving me support no matter what, I refused. It was all about me fighting for myself, because that’s the world. If you don’t fight for yourself, who will?
The help of others was essential for the first weeks. I needed people to open the door for me; okay, I know it seems like a good thing, like a gentleman doing that in the first date, but no, it sucks, trust me. I needed someone to accompany me in the washroom, because yes, I couldn’t zip my pants up. I needed my mom to help me to dress in the morning imagine how embarrassing is to need you mom’s help to dress up when you’re 16… Yeah, here’s my independence hitting rock bottom.
That wasn’t even the worst part. The stress was. I was stressed out most of the time, probably because I couldn’t do what made me feel good. Going to the gym, working out whatever it is, legs, abs or arms, and feeling the pain of sore muscles on the next day or hanging out with my friends on the weekend, creating new memories; or going to the practises every Tuesday and Thursday, working hard to help the team to improve in every single aspect… Being stuck at home for 3 weeks, while having a nice weather outside after months of rain, for sure, was the most awful thing that could happen to me.
After a while, I started to see the good things about this. Is quite funny how people, including me, just wait for something bad to happen to notice the things around them. Needing my mom’s help for almost everything made me notice how far from her I was. Hearing my mom’s spontaneous laugh after my stories of how my day was in school and her words trying to comfort me when she saw me crying before going to bed made me notice how much I missed her, and how she missed me too. By getting close to my mom, I got close to my dad too. He was always there trying to make me laugh even when I had told him that laughing hurts, but he always answered me saying, “A good laugh is never too bad.” and he was right, those moments were making me feel good. And in that moment, I finally realised that I didn’t have to carry the weight of life on my shoulders alone. Because life is not about myself, but the people who I share the weight of life.
Life is just like yin yang. There’s always the bad in the good, and the good in the bad. It’s easy to see the nicest things when you’re feeling good, but its also a test for your patience to see that when you are in the lowest point. But after you do, you’ll look at things from another perspective, because you will always try to take only the good from the bad things, because you’ll know that the bad only comes to teach you a lesson.