Progress Isn’t Linear

By Abbey Sallila | IG:  @sallila_51

I remember feeling the first initial pain in group lift and thinking I had just been sore from previous lift and fall ball practice at the beginning of the week. I tried to keep going on as normal but I knew something was up when I could barely goblet squat a 15lb dumbbell and pain shot down my legs and lower back. One of my teammates just told me to take it easy for the rest of the lift and reevaluate at practice later that night. The whole day I couldn’t get comfortable sitting, standing, or even lying down; the pain would just radiate constantly. But I just decided to take some Advil, ice up, and stretch just so I could make it through the 30 minutes of fall ball practice we had since I had to leave early for a class. That night at practice, the pain just kept getting worse. It hurt to run, jump, change directions; nothing was going my way. I left practice early to get to my class and decided to go see my trainer the next morning. Initially, we thought it was a muscle injury and that I just needed some time to let it heal. I missed out on practically the rest of my fall ball season and was stuck doing physical therapy and treatment in the training room everyday. At lifts I was stuck doing a lot of mobility until I could gradually carry weight without feeling pain. I was so focused on trying to get better physically that I wasn’t paying a lick of attention to how I was doing mentally at the time. 

There were small changes in my attitudes and behaviors after initially injuring my back. To me, it was almost like a blur in time, I constantly felt foggy and fatigued. I didn’t have a lot of motivation to really do anything unless it had to do something with treatment or PT or anything related to getting back into lacrosse. I didn’t really want to go out with my friends, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and just usually would isolate myself in my room. I obviously didn’t know that at the time I was self-isolating but my friends definitely had a sense that something was up. I didn’t mention anything really to anyone on how I was feeling mentally because I didn’t even know how to put it into words. I decided to just power through my third semester and I would be ready to go physically come preseason and everything would feel normal again. Lacrosse was the only thing that I was missing anyways and once I had it back I would feel much better. 

I was so ready to jump back into lacrosse coming into the spring semester. I had been back to lifting close to my normal weight in the gym and was fully confident in my abilities to get myself back to where I was pre-injury. One of the first lifts back, we were assigned to work on hex bar deadlifts which was the lift that I believed I injured my back with previously. Me being me and being so overconfident in my abilities, I went too heavy on a rep and when I picked up the bar felt a slight pop in my back. I dropped the bar and was almost in tears just trying to “walk it off.” My teammate looked at me and asked if I was okay, and I tried to just shake it off and play it cool but she and I both knew I had just reinjured my back. I went to my trainer and we decided it would be a good idea for me to get a MRI before I could start preseason practices and lifting again. Once again I was benched and I didn’t know what to do with my feelings. I tried to stay positive around my teammates and hide all pain and sadness about my injury. I fully believed that I couldn’t show those vulnerable emotions around my teammates since other people were worse off than me when it came to injuries and it’s hard when you don’t have anything to show for that injury like crutches or a brace. I was just in so much pain physically it really started to mess with me mentally. I was having trouble falling asleep and started sleeping too much during the day. I was skipping classes and constantly felt tired, foggy, unmotivated, anxious, and sad.   

I was lucky enough that I got cleared from the doctor I had been seeing for my back to start preseason practice doing limited drills. The MRI I had gotten revealed that I had herniated a disc in my low back which was putting pressure on my sciatic nerve causing the pain and numbness in my legs. I just had to be careful and continue my treatments and PT. I was so so so excited to get back to lacrosse, even though I could only do certain drills. At our very first preseason practice we were doing a shuttle passing drill and I ended up getting hit in the side of my head with a ball while I was also in motion. I remember immediately hearing ringing in my ear and not having my earring in anymore. I took a minute to collect myself thinking that I just got bumped and would be fine. I decided to jump into the next drill when I realized my eyes were starting to get sensitive to the lights in our indoor facility and that the ringing in my ear was still going. I tried to stay in the drill as long as I could but I couldn’t handle the lights or the echoing of sounds. I went to see our trainer and she gave me a bag of ice to throw on my head to see if that would help. It was a struggle to sit on the sideline that night with the concussion symptoms I was having but I pushed through and went home and fell asleep. The next day I felt terrible with the noise and light sensitivities, a pounding headache, and feeling nauseous constantly. I tried going to my class and pretended like everything was normal but my teammates could clearly tell I was not feeling good and told me to go home and rest. The whole next two weeks trying to get through concussion protocol was a struggle. Being alone in my room constantly was not helpful; the feelings of sadness and anxiety I was already having were heightened when I was by myself. I didn’t do anything but sleep and would barely eat. 

Once I was finally cleared both for my back and my concussion, I was able to finally participate in my first full contact practice since fall ball. I was ecstatic to say the least. I had been feeling so down without having my usual outlet to confide in which was not helping me physically or mentally. I was doing pretty well keeping up with my team considering I hadn’t done a full practice in forever and was just super happy to be back doing what I loved. But of course with my luck, during one of our last drills my foot hit a divot in the turf and I felt my ankle roll, crack, and pop. I had sprained both my ankles before so I knew exactly what happened. I wanted to finish off practice though so I walked it off, went and grabbed my old brace and finished off the last drill very, very slowly. The next day I went to see our trainer and she told me I was going to be out of practice again for at least a week. I was pissed to say the least. It seemed that all these injuries I had been getting would happen as soon as I was getting better. During this period of time my mental health was really starting to hit a low. All I wanted was to play lacrosse and I couldn’t. It was killing me. I was physically and mentally drained from all the pain I was in and emotionally drained from keeping all my feelings bottled up. I hit a point where I would start becoming easily irritable when I would hang out with my friends and I would just lash out on them and then go to my room to be alone, cry, and try to sleep regardless of how much I had already been sleeping throughout the day. 

The rest of the season I was in and out of practices with my back having flare ups here and there which was not helping me mentally. Because of all my self-isolating, my grades started to really drop, I wasn’t socializing as much as I normally would, wasn’t eating and was losing weight fairly quickly, and I would only attempt to leave my bed when it came to going to practice or lift. I didn’t feel happy at all and quite frankly really only felt depressed or anxious. And because I wasn’t talking to anyone about what was going on, I had begun to self harm. It was the only thing I would get some relief from at the time. My mind would constantly be chattering, putting false ideas and anxieties into my thoughts and I didn’t know what to do. I felt hopeless and alone. My friends didn’t really know or see this side of me and the thought of telling them scared me tremendously. So I continued to keep to myself as much as I could. 

Our last game of the season that year was a dedication game for Morgan’s Message. But right before that game, our campus community had ended up losing a student to suicide. With all of the stuff that was going on, I began to feel very triggered emotionally. Our team had a meeting in the locker room after the suicide to see where everyone was at mentally. A few of the girls on our team at the time had personally known this student since they had lived in the same town so our coach wanted to address it and make sure everyone had the support they needed. I just remember tearing up and not really being present mentally during the conversation. I felt so weird and was just wondering if I was having similar thoughts and feelings and just didn’t want to admit it. My feelings that whole week were all over the place leading up to our MM dedication game and I just didn’t know what to do. It’s almost like a blur to me because I didn’t feel mentally present for any of it. I just felt like I could have been simply existing at this point. 

With the season over, all we had left was finals. My parents had kept asking me about my grades which I knew were terrible and I had not prepared for any of my finals. One day I had woken up and gotten ready to go take one of my finals when all of sudden nothing felt real. I started feeling more anxious than I had ever felt before. I was scared to be by myself in my room but had no idea where to go feeling like this. It was like I had just blacked out and I didn’t really know what was going on or what my brain was telling me. I was terrified; I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I decided to text my friends and simply just said, “I think I need to go to the emergency room.” They replied about ten minutes later as soon as they both got out of their finals and came down to my dorm room. I don’t really remember what happened because my mind was going a million miles a minute but I do remember just not being able to form my thoughts or feelings into words and just sobbing in their arms for a while. They brought me to our coach’s office to try to distract me from what was going on for a bit, forced me to eat something, and tried to get me to do work. All this time though I still felt like I was just physically present and my mind was in the same place it was in the morning. My parents had been trying to contact me all day but I just kept ignoring them. They got so worried to the point they started calling my friends and it was irritating me because I just wanted to be left alone and pretend like nothing had happened. I ended up breaking down over the phone with them and they decided to drive the 6 hours up to school so they could be with me. 

Over the last few days of the semester I just felt weird. My parents and I had talked and tried to figure everything out knowing that I wasn’t going to be doing well academically at the end of that semester. We also decided I was going to go to therapy when I got home for the summer and just try to get me on the right track again. To this very day I am still working to get back on that track, utilizing my support systems through school like therapy, the Morgan’s Message community, and medication as well as my advisors for academic help. But even though I have made some progress in bettering myself, I still have my days. I still have days where all I can do is get out of bed and only have motivation to do one or two tasks. I still have days where I'm not feeling good emotionally or mentally. But what I have learned is that I don’t have to hide it anymore and that I can ask for help from my support systems. I’ve learned that it’s okay to just focus on one task at a time and that I should be able to feel a sense of accomplishment before moving onto the next. I’ve learned that progress doesn’t happen in a straight line and that it’s okay to look at it one day at a time. I think the biggest lesson I learned throughout the past year though is that your sport is not your identity. I had to learn that the hard way through injury and not being able to have the one thing I used as my identity but being an athlete is just one part of what makes you who you are as a person. You are so many other amazing things besides an athlete and you will do so many wonderful things other than just playing a sport.