Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [70]
By that point, running was the most important thing in my life, and the idea of not running was counter to everything I believed in. My dream was to follow in Billy Mills’s footsteps; to represent the United States on the Olympic team and win the gold medal. I know now that even had I never been injured, the dream was an unattainable one. I might as well have wished to fly.
As I said, I was a good runner, but not a great one. I didn’t have the natural foot speed or stamina to be world-class; indeed, I’d gotten as far as I had by training harder than most high schoolers. These realizations were only made in retrospect; at the time, the injury was devastating to me. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I were failing.
The injury raged on throughout the fall; in the winter it healed slightly before I reinjured it again. Around that time, Lisa and I broke up, high school sweethearts doomed by the distance between us. School continued to be a challenge, in part because my mind was elsewhere.
I somehow managed to scrape together a partial outdoor season, and even ended up breaking the school record as a member of one of the relay teams. It was my last meet of the year. By the time I finished the race, I could barely walk. My Achilles tendon had swollen to the size of a lemon. Any movement was excruciating; my tendon literally squeaked like a rusty hinge whenever I took a step. When I arrived back home for my summer break, I needed crutches to get off the plane.
I was miserable for the first few weeks of the summer. I had no job, no girlfriend, and because my brother had moved out, no one to hang around with. In addition, I was under doctor’s orders not to run for three months, which would only put me further behind my peers.
My mom tried to come up with ways to cheer me up. At least, that’s what she called it. “Paint the living room,” she’d say, “it’ll cheer you up.” Or, “Sand the door so we can stain it a different color. It’ll boost your spirits.”
Had her ideas worked, I would have been the most cheerful kid on the planet. As it was, however, I simply moped around in paint-splattered clothes, working all day on various projects, and mumbling that all I wanted to do was run and wondering why God wouldn’t help or listen to me. By mid-June, my mother had grown exasperated with my attitude, and, as I was lamenting my plight for the hundredth time at the kitchen table, finally shook her head.
“Your problem is that you’re bored. You need to find something to do.”
“I don’t want to do anything but run.”
“What if you can’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if your injury never gets better? Or, even if it does, what if you can’t train the way you want to anymore for fear of hurting it again? You don’t want to spend your life doing nothing.”
“Mom . . .”
“Hey, I’m just offering up the obvious here. I know it wouldn’t be fair, but no one ever said that life was fair.”
I lowered my head to the table.
“Oh no,” she said firmly, “you’re not going to just sit here at the table and keep acting this way. Don’t just pout. Do something about it.”
“Like what?”
“It’s your life.”
I raised my head in frustration. “Mom . . .”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. Then she looked at me and said the words that would eventually change my life. “Write a book.”
Until that moment, I’d never considered writing. Granted, I read all the time, but actually sitting down and coming up with a story on my own? The very notion was ridiculous. I knew nothing about the craft, I had no burning desire to see my words in print. I’d never taken a class in creative writing, had never written for the yearbook or school newspaper, nor did I suspect I had some sort of hidden talent when it came to composing prose. Yet, despite all those things, the notion was somehow appealing, and