I first had surgery when I was a sophomore in high school and again my sophomore year in college. High school wasn't bad because I had my family to help me but it was in college where I had trouble. I hate not being able to do things for myself and that was already bothering mentally. On top of all that trouble school wise, living wise and needed help doing everything, I was struggling mentally with my track team. They not only judged me for having surgery, but they cut me out of everything just because I was incapable of going to practices sometimes. Like I said sometimes… I would go if I could physically but just getting out of surgery and seeing others run and being able to things hurt the way it is and being forced to watch it just sucks. I felt so sidelined from everything and when my team decided to leave me out of other activities, and in my thought- just because they hated the fact that I couldn’t run and they had to go to practice and actually practice. Who knows but when you are apart of a team, in my opinion, you shouldn’t leave out your injured teammates because you don’t know how well they are doing mentally. Literally cut me and others out of a team picture which portrayed reality from the (as I like to call it) “cool kids” table. From then on, I quit because I felt like I wasn’t wanted there. I know it sounds silly, but until you’ve been left out and felt unwanted from a team because of an injury you’ll think different. Everyone would shame me, and on top of that I couldn’t get back to where I was right away physically and I basically got punished from that because it took a longer recovery. I am now happy that I am not in track anymore even though I really do miss running but I am glad that I had so much time to recover because now I am able to run marathons for fun. Because running is still my stress reliever, but this way, I get to do it for me, and me only.