The story that makes up me isn’t something that made me cripple in sadness, and it isn’t something that made me question why the Earth was made, or if there really is a higher power. But the event that is stuck in my mind happened in 8th grade when I was 14 years old. I promise you that I have tried every sport, and I promise you I sucked at every single one. In soccer I picked flowers on the field for my Mom and would scream to the coach in the middle of the game if I could sit out yet. In basketball I came into practice and said, “Hey coach! Can we practice lamps?” My coach had absolutely no clue what I was saying, and probably neither do any of you who play basketball. That’s because I was talking about layups. That was my first and last year playing basketball, and my last year playing any sport ever. I think I also partially hated every sport I tried because the whole time I just wanted to dance. And that’s exactly what I ended up doing. Since the 4th grade I’ve had 20+ hours per week of practice, competitions, recitals, and performances, but I’ve been dancing since I was 2. In fact, I can vividly remember kicking my feet in the air, and showing off to my teacher that I would absolutely NOT be wearing my ballet shoes to class that day. Taking classes were, and still are one of the only highlights during a long week of school, and tests, and no sleep, and people who don’t like you for absolutely no reason. Nothing will ever be able to hold a candle to how it feels like perform on stage or dance a combination that you love. And I know that not a lot of you can relate to this because you don’t know how it feels, but for the people who do understand, I hope that you feel that way too. When I was in 8th I lost a part of that, at least that’s how it felt to me. We were on stage for the first number in the first recital out of six recitals. And I dislocated my knee. I don’t want to describe that too much, it makes me gag and makes my heart hurt everytime I think about it. To put it in short, my right knee cap was all the way on the outside of my leg, and I had to crawl off stage. I sat on the floor on the wings of the stage, not able to cry, just in shock of the pain I felt. I looked up at one point to see my favorite dance teacher in the whole world, and the person I looked up more than anyone, who taught me everything I knew, tearing up at the state I was in. She was about to move 3,000 miles away in only a week, and she would never be able to see me dance again, and I would never be able to take a class from her ever again. After that day, I was in crutches and a full leg brace. I couldn’t dance. I was so tired everyday coming home from school because of crutching around. I was stuck in this state for 2 months. I felt literally trapped, and it was during those 2 months when I realized that I am not the type of person who can be held back. I’m the type of person who needs to be able to move far, far away at a moment’s notice, and go and see whatever I want, whenever I want. And to me it’s funny, because I learned all of that about myself from a leg brace. But then I got back into dance, and ever since that day in September I’ve felt, in the very back of my heart and mind, this pang of disappointment behind everything I do. Well, I’ll be honest with you all, that feeling isn’t always in the back of my heart and mind, most days it’s in the very front and center. And I know that it could be stupid to some people, but to me it’s not. Because the most important thing in my life, that I held so close to my heart, and still hold so close to my heart suddenly wasn’t the same anymore. Suddenly I didn’t have any confidence behind me, suddenly I couldn’t always depend on coming to dance and feeling great and being happy. I looked at myself in the mirror in class, attempting to dance the way I used to, and it just didn’t feel the same. I felt like I lost a loved one, and couldn’t get it back. I was 5 again, and had just had my favorite toy stolen by my sister, or worse, I just had my sister stolen. And now I’m still here, and I still work so hard and that’s what I learned. I learned that you will never get good, or better at anything if you don’t dedicate yourself to it. And it took a long time to learn that, and I still am. But if you can’t work hard and get better at anything, and you float through your life like that, then that’s the biggest leg brace of all.