Olivia Ross: Starting Over
I don’t think most people are prepared for what it feels like to start over… again. When I tore my ACL the second time, my first thoughts were simple: it’s over. There was no way it happened again. When I got the news a couple of weeks later that I did, in fact, shred my ACL again, I knew it was real, but it took a little bit for that realization to fully sink in. Another thought took over for the next several months: I don’t want to go out like that.
This second tear was so different from the first one from day one. I knew what was coming, I knew how long it would take, how slow it would feel, and how much of the battle would not be seen by anyone else. In a strange way, I think not knowing made it easier for my first time tearing my ACL. I didn’t understand the process ahead of me, but this time I knew everything, and that is something else that really scared me. It didn’t feel like I was just starting over plain and simple; it was starting over with full awareness, and somehow that made it heavier.
At the same time, this wasn’t just another injury. This was my senior year, and this was not what I imagined my senior year would be like. As summer ended and into the end of fall, there was this constant, quiet awareness that kept showing up every single day, that kept reminding me this wasn’t how my final year of softball was supposed to feel. I did not lose my sport because I never left it. It was every day of my life, but being there and being able to fully contribute and participate are two completely different things. And through all of it, there was this constant pressure in the back of my mind: Will I be back in time? Not just back, but back enough, back to contribute and back to feel like myself again.
No one really talks about how hard it is to trust your body again after an injury, especially when it’s already proven it can fail you once before. The entire recovery process, and even the months leading up to clearance, can feel as if every movement is questionable and out to get you. It is not just physical recovery; it is mental and emotional. But somewhere in the middle of all this, you must be able to find a shift inside of you. I realized I had been holding onto a very specific idea of what my last year was supposed to be. And the more I compared my reality to the expectation that I had, the harder it was to appreciate where I was and where my feet were.
So, I had to make a decision. I could keep focusing on everything that didn’t happen to me or I could start redefining what this season still could be. The redefining does not include ignoring all the hard parts and pretending like everything works out perfectly all the time; it includes the decision to find value in a different version of the experience than the one I originally planned. Showing up every single day for yourself, when you are mentally and physically exhausted, and doing the work anyway, is not easy. Being patient when you want to rush the process is not easy. Staying present, even when you are so focused on timelines and progress, is not easy. Progress stops feeling like milestones and starts feeling like consistency, and it is so not easy. Things feel repetitive, slow, frustrating, and sometimes even pointless. Even though this was not how I wanted my senior year to go, I have learned that not getting the story you wanted does not mean it’s the wrong one. Sometimes the most meaningful growth comes from the moments you never would have chosen, ever. The moments that force you to slow down, reset, rest, and start over again.
Starting over again isn’t something anyone asks for. It is so exhausting and at times, unfair. But it also asks something of you. It asks you to keep showing up, even when you feel all these feelings and even when life isn’t looking the way you planned, and even when you already know how hard it’s going to be. If you are in that place right now, whether it’s injury, any kind of setback, or something that nobody else can see, you are not behind and you are not alone! You are just being asked to grow in a different way because starting over is a decision and not a setback. Choosing to begin again even with everything you know, is a kind of strength that not everyone is willing to step into, but it is one that changes you in the ways your “perfect” story never could.
