Admissions Essay Overcoming a Struggle

Autumn raindrops were pattering against my bedroom window. I was playing chess with my younger sister. “Stalemate,” I said. As she contemplated her next move, I suddenly felt a dull, then a sharp pain in my stomach. Breathing was difficult. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, my arms around my stomach.

My next memory was of lying in a bed in the hospital. I knew something was very, very wrong when I smelled the antiseptic of the hospital and saw the white and blue gowns of the doctors and nurses around me. I heard one of them say they needed to do a full medical workup. But despite their efforts, they could not find the source of my excruciating pain. Eventually, I was discharged with an inconclusive diagnosis. They said that I needed to wait it out for another twenty-four hours at home since I seemed to be in no imminent danger.

At home, I continued to suffer pain without any scientifically or logically explicable cause. I did everything that I could to find out why, even though the professionals had no answers. A week of browsing the Internet left me no wiser. I felt even more confused and frustrated.

The only possible explanation I could come up with was that I had injured my back practicing the Japanese martial art of Judo at age eleven. Since the back and stomach are related to each other in the body’s nervous system, my back problem, I rationalized, could be manifesting itself in stomach pain.

I tried to find ways to cope with my pain and distract myself. I increased rather than slackened in my exercise regime in the hopes of gaining strength. As a distraction and a source of empowerment, I joined my school varsity handball team to act defy my chronic pain. This opportunity enabled me to later win the Catholic High School Sport Association Championship.

I also tried to find philosophical solace. Now, whenever I was at a Starbucks, I would look at the faces around me and reflect upon the fact that many of the smiling and happy people might have their own, hidden suffering and pain just like I did. I read books to lose myself in another world of fiction and to sympathize with struggles other than my own.