The Perfect Balance by Morgan P.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to take a step back, and watch. Whether you want to or not, you have to begin making decisions on your own. You have to take responsibility; responsibility for your actions, your self, and the people around you. You have to be mindful of everything you are doing, and of those that you are influencing. Everyone takes this step back at different times. When you do, it helps to know and understand what is important in life. You have to think, “What do I value?”

***

The wind is in my face, blowing my hair back, away from my eyes. I can see everything; the girl dribbling the ball towards me, and my teammate making a run up the field. I can hear the people on the sideline cheering, and my coaches yelling. I charge. I lunge towards the ball, and the person dribbling it, just like I’ve done a million times before. But this time was different. A searing pain ran from my knee to the rest of my body. I froze out of pain and fear. I went down. I hated getting hurt. I always felt weird crying, and then not being able to go back in. This time was different. I could feel it.

I was on the sidelines now, and my knee was about three times the size that it should have been. I wasn’t going to be able to go back in this game.

I had made it. A whole week without playing soccer... I thought I was going to die! But I was still alive, and now I could play again. I couldn’t wait for practice that night. I was running around and my knee was fine. Thank goodness. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had to wait a whole other week.

Then it happened. I tried a cut move with my left foot, and a sharp pain shot through my whole right leg. I almost fell, but I fought through it. Probably not the best thing that I could’ve done, but I wasn’t going to take the chance of being out another week. That was torture. And I was fine. Sure, my knee hurt almost non-stop, but it wasn’t hurting that badly.

However about year later, I was at soccer tryouts. The double sessions were really doing in my knee. It was hurting more than ever now and I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. Then, it happened again. The same horrible pain that shot through my leg the last year came back, and I collapsed when my knee gave out. I was out of tryouts for the rest of the day, and had a hard time walking.

My mother took me to the doctors. After some x-rays and exercises, he said that I had patella misalignment. I later found out that that meant that the muscle on one side of my thigh was stronger than the one on the outside of my thigh, which makes my knee cap move back and forth when I’m running, and causes tension on my patella tendon. The doctors gave me a knee brace to wear when I’m playing soccer, and it helps a lot. My knee doesn’t hurt at all when I’m just walking, and it only hurts a little when I’m running. If it weren’t for my knee brace, I wouldn’t be able to play soccer.

***

Here in South Hadley, a winter wonderland is every child’s dream. While in every other aspect of life I am a “young adult,” here, I qualify as a child.

Every winter, I look forward to the first snow of the year. I love running outside at the earliest possible moment. I make snow forts with my siblings, and have a never ending snow ball fight. We make snow angels, and snow houses, and have tons and tons of fun. After we eat lunch, we walk down the street to the high school and sled down the hill there for hours at a time. When we finally get home, its dark out and we are frozen. We quickly change out of our wet clothes and into the warm ones that my mom just took out of the dryer.

My dad turns on the fire place and a good family movie. Then we sit on the couch, and carefully sip our hot chocolate. It’s so yummy. The creamy, chocolaty goodness with fluff sits happily in my stomach. This is what I live for.

If there’s a time when the four children in my family EVER get along, this is it. This feeling is amazing. You know the one where everything seems okay? Where everything seems to make sense? It’s the feeling where for, even just a second, you’re calm. The world just stops for a second. There is peace, everybody is happy, and the inside of you is all warm and fuzzy. I wish that I could feel like this all the time. But all good things come to an end. And this time does too. That’s why, on the rare occasions that I get this time, I cherish it very much.

***

My values, the things that are important to me, are my knee brace, and snowy days. While on the surface, these things may seem extremely different, deep down, they relate. My knee brace allows me to play soccer. Both soccer and snowy days by the fire help me to express myself.

So, in this crucial time, you need to know what it is that you value. When you know that, you will discover who it is that you are aspiring to be, whether it is a soccer star, or someone with a chaotic life, where calmness is a rarity. You will become a better person. And you will like yourself better because of it. So go discover your values, and find that perfect balance, of physical and priceless values.