Tiffany O.
Photography by David Lee
If you’re reading this, you’re not giving up by listening to your body.
To be fully transparent, it took me way too long to learn this lesson, and I am still trying to accept it. Although I am confident in my decision to end my rowing career earlier than I would have wanted, I still sometimes struggle to express exactly how I feel on the topic without worrying about backlash. Everyone’s experience with injury is unique, and thus everyone in a similar situation should make the decision best suited for them, rather than those around them. I understand that no matter what I say on the topic there will always be people who do not understand my point, and that’s okay. Honestly, unless you experience something similar, you will not understand the point I am making. My hope with this letter is to reach those in similar positions to the one I was in for so long who are walking the tightrope between not letting those around you down and not letting yourself down.
Most athletes can probably relate to being told to push through the pain, but what people really mean when they say this is actually “push through the discomfort.” When discomfort becomes pain it has gone too far. I have been active my whole life, always finding joy in moving my body and finding teams of people who become family. When I decided to pick up a new sport the summer before my senior year of high school, I did not expect much to come from it apart from finding joy in a new activity. By some miracle, this sport that I had recently fallen in love with gave me an opportunity to go to the school I now call home.
Coaches, teammates, and medical professionals tell you to advocate for yourself and ask for help when you need it, but when you pride yourself on being hyper-independent, it can become impossible to accept the fact that you might not be able to fix yourself when you’re experiencing pain. It’s easy to make excuses and write off your own pain as not being “bad enough” to ask for help. I cannot count how many times I stopped myself from asking for help because of how many more people I thought needed it more than I did. The simple truth is that I was in denial about my own injuries, and I did not want to feel like I needed to ask somebody else for help for one reason or another. Recognize when you’re hurting and need help from others. Give yourself the space needed to understand the gravity of your situation. You are not a burden for seeking assistance.
I found myself getting injured frequently and for extended periods of time. This surpassed sore muscles and lost sleep– My body was no longer getting stronger and I no longer felt sharp. It was not until then that I was able to appreciate the brief moments of relief. At first, I would only experience pain when actively working out. From there, it progressed to any time I would walk, then sometimes when resting, and eventually it started to impact my sleep. Waking up in the middle of the night to sharp pains, feeling like I was having a heart attack was my final straw. I had allowed it to get to a point I could no longer take. It was definitely partially my own fault for not seeking treatment as early as possible, and I do not want to excuse my own poor decision, but I will say that when you feel overlooked in the first place you start believing that nobody will help you anyway.
Eventually, I began receiving treatment for my injuries, but no matter how much time I would spend doing my physical therapy I was not able to bounce back entirely to where I could once perform regularly. I only had to push through one more year of college athletics and I could focus on feeling better once my final season would come to an end. I figured that this was just how everything was meant to be. The only real solution I have found to help is to simply not do much of anything, which has been incredibly hard. Prematurely ending my final season of rowing was an incredibly hard decision, however, I knew that it was my only real chance of feeling any sort of relief before the end of the year.
Part of me feels pathetic and embarrassed to write all this out. Could I have pushed through the pain and finished my senior season? Maybe, but definitely not without worsening my physical condition. It is exhausting to try everything and not feel any better. It is exhausting to know that no matter how hard you work, your body will not permit you to go any further. The most exhausting part of it all is not the physical pain of working through an injury, it’s not knowing what is wrong with you or even how to express to someone what is going on. I did not have the vocabulary to describe in detail what I was feeling, and that led to a lot of misdiagnoses.
Your mind and your heart know your limits and strengths better than anyone else. There is strength in having the ability to tune into what they are telling you. I emphasize this because coming to this realization is what made me able to advocate for myself in the doctor’s office. After questioning my sanity and running several tests, I finally had my answers. As it turns out, my sternum is not and has never been fully connected, and coupled with the repetitive motion of rowing, my chest pain only worsened over time.
Knowing that you have support and being able to allow yourself to fall back on it are two separate things, and for a long time, I believed that going to my support system meant I was giving up. Surely I should be able to have everything figured out and push through it. The thing is, just because you can push through it doesn’t mean you should. I have learned that if something appears to be extremely difficult, you’re likely doing it wrong. I should not have subjected myself to training for so long under such circumstances when I had the power to seek help at the first sign of an issue. This, however, is my thought process after the fact. I know better now than I did then, but there is no changing anything that has already happened; The only thing to do is give my past self some grace.
Though I feel confident that I made the right decision, I struggle from time to time when talking with other athletes. I worry that I sound pathetic in comparison to those who have overcome or fought through injuries. Do my three and a half years of fighting diminish because I chose myself and my health the last half of my last year? I think that would be an incredibly unhealthy way of looking at things, but I would be lying if I said I had not thought that way at least once. I worry if people will understand my choice, even though I understand that it does not matter what people think. I suppose this struggle stems from hoping people understand, although that may never happen unless they have experienced something similar. Whenever I think this way, I remind myself that it truly is not that deep. It does not matter if nobody else understands so long as I do.
You deserve answers, and you deserve proper attention and treatment. These simple things are the building blocks for having the ability to make informed decisions. Memento vivere, meaning “remember to live,” has been my motto these past few months as I navigate life after college athletics. It is natural to feel lost when something abruptly ends, but it is up to you to continue moving forward. I have discovered different forms of working out that make me happy and do not intensify any pain, which I would consider to be a success. Your heart, mind, and body in general are always providing you with signals, and it is your choice to listen to them or not. So if you’re reading this and don’t know how much longer you can fight alone, ask for help. You are not a failure because you’re closing a chapter. You are not letting anyone down by choosing yourself. Your hard work does not disappear when you decide to rest.
Tiffany O., Boston College
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