I fell off my bike and broke my wrist. Instead of helping me, the jogger behind me pulled out into the street because my bike was blocking the sidewalk. Suddenly, he glanced back and asked, “Are you okay?” I was crying, clutching my arm in agony.
“No,” I moaned. Then, with a smirk, he said, “Should’ve been watching where you were going,” and jogged off like I was an inconvenience in his cardio schedule. That moment lived rent-free in my head for months.
Not because of the pain—although breaking your wrist isn’t exactly a walk in the park—but because of the way he looked at me. Like I wasn’t even worth slowing down for. Like my pain was annoying to him.
I was sixteen, already awkward, already trying to prove I wasn’t the weak one in my family, and that smirk was a gut punch. I ended up in a cast for six weeks. Missed my swim team regionals.
Even worse, I had to rely on my older sister, Reyna, to help me with everything from opening doors to washing my hair. She was annoyingly kind about it, which made me feel even more useless. But she was the only one who didn’t make fun of me.
Not like my younger cousin Dario, who reenacted my fall every Thanksgiving until I threatened to tell everyone about his fear of butterflies. But after the cast came off, something changed in me. I got obsessed with getting stronger.
Not just physically, but mentally. I started training—not just swimming but running, weight training, boxing, anything. My coach at the community center said I had “something to prove,” and she wasn’t wrong.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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