I was around 17 when I broke my leg. I could hold my own when I used to run before I broke my leg. I wasn't fast at running, but I could run for miles without stopping. I was young, fit and very active. Then when playing football school, I had the ball as usual and a guy who was around the age of 18 slide tackled me and hit my shin. It broke my leg in two places. After that the school temporarily banned football from being played for a couple months. Basketball came the thing. Of course I wasn't attending school, I was having my leg tendered by several doctors and nurses who broke my leg back into the right position then operated by placing a steel frame around my leg and eventually I found out I had a titanium nail in my leg. (Still even today)
I'm not sure I can say it ruined my life, but in a way it kind of did. Would my life be different today if I was still healthy and active, would I have made better decisions? Or would I be as depressed as I am today. I don't know what the outcome would have been. But you just imagine sometimes and think, what if? What if decisions and actions in life were changed slightly, would it totally change your life?
I remember when I was 16, I knew nothing about computers, well in the sense I wasn't really that interested. My dream was to become a athlete of some sort, whether that be a footballer or something to do with sports. Then when I broke my leg, I had a laptop with me, I was in bed constantly for 6 months. I missed the cross-country run my school was having, I was pitted as first place after the Year 11's left school. – As my class had stepped up onward a year to Year 10. I missed all that and most importantly I lost my stamina, fitness and goal to become some sort of sportsman.
I guess I was thinking about this as I was struggling in my local park in Taiwan to complete a lap around a running track, just jogging. I remembered I could easily run that and 10 times more when I was around 16. It kind of broke my heart today just looking back and that and seeing what had gained in return for the loss of my fitness. I gained these qualities in my opinion:
- The ability to touch type on my computer. As I said, I wasn't that interested in computers. I had messed around with computers in 1998, when my Dad bought a £900 computer which you would probably find in a scrap yard today. With this ability I gained high scores in college as I could type fast, do it very well and eloquently with the help of spell check and the nifty synonym tool in Microsoft Word. (I could make my work sound professional)
- Knowledge of the internet and how to setup websites and how they work. I bought domain names, knew how to search engine optimize (SEO) and gained knowledge in the web hosting sector running several free and paid web hosts.
- Understanding of others views through the internet. I used to do a lot of forum debating. It made me learn and understand how to debate and understand others views.
So what did I lose?
Okay, so I understand I lost my fitness and in return I got technology and sort of became a nerd. Well not a nerd really. Since I don't act like a total freak around technology, but most of my days I spend around my computer.
But there is another aspect that I lost. It was my social ability. I spent 6 months in a bed, no school, education or anything like that. I had friends come around after school, but that isn't the same. I also used to have a really hot best friend (Yes, she is a girl), she used to come round and lay next to me while using my laptop. I used to have a crush on her mere beauty, smell and personality. She had it all, what a crazy person she was and what a crazy person I was for not asking her out ONCE.
She moved to another school, a couple years later however and I never really spoke to her again, she became a better friend with my sister though. I guess that was a day and age when I felt like I was worth something and when my family were totally secure.
I had no worries or insecurities. In school, it was purely about image and just looking good. If there is still something that I have wrong in me today is the fact that I cannot talk to girls in a way to ask them out. I am confident when I'm drunk and I will ask a girl to go for more than a date, but that is because I'm freaking drunk, I have an excuse as to why I asked and if it goes wrong, heck I'm fucking drunk, I didn't know I asked. :p But when I'm sober, I'm less confident, less appealing and a lesser person. A nobody in the crowd.
So I guess I loss a bit of my social mobility. I guess when I was younger I could have gone out more. But to be honest, I was very manipulated about the concern of having an image in school. I used to wear clothes purely on the basis I didn't want to be naked. But others would where clothes just for the image. I turned into the same monster and started wearing chav clothes. Basically chavs are linked to being douche bags or pretend-hard men, even though that idea is silly, but the ideal in England has changed to people wearing gangsta clothes nowadays. Though you still see a lot of chavs around on a street corner, thinking they own the place. But I guess I was bought into the idea, that to be cool, you would have to wear these clothes. That ideal didn't last long as I took a long stare at myself and thought, "what a fool that guy is". So I wore the mixture of gansgta (Baggy hoodies or big T-shirts) and just normal jeans or shorts. It had an advantage to the fact it was more comfortable to wear and it actually looked good.
But the trade off between what I loss and gained, I'm not sure if it were reversed and I was still very fit, would much have changed?