Autobiographical narrative: personal experience and storytelling

Life in high school was never a breeze, but I did have it easier than most others. Although I was always more into the sports and activities side of school life I still maintained a 3.0 GPA. Plus, the basketball team I was on provided an easy and almost instantaneous camaraderie with my peers, which allowed me to bypass the typical nervous and shy meeting of new friends that the majority of students endure. The best thing of all, though, was the scholarship I was awarded: to play basketball at UCLA after graduating high school. I had always believed I would be granted one, right from the day I joined the team, just as I always maintained and believed in high aspirations for myself, but to actually achieve it was still surreal and staggering; by no means did I take it for granted. I treasured the fact that I had been noticed as a stand-out player, but I was also acutely aware that it did not happen purely from my belief in myself. The scholarship was the end-result of hard training, five days a week I hit the court, finding weak points in my game and working to improve them until they became strengths in my game. When I wasn't on the court training, I would spend as much of my free time as possible watching live and televised games and reading technique advice from the professionals. Each day I realized what I had achieved and I became a ball of buzzing excitement for the future. I had no fears or reservations about leaving my current life behind; I like change, and seeing the future unfold was exciting.

Whether it was fate, karma or sheer bad luck, my life took an unexpected turn and my scholarship disappeared before my eyes. Some would say the turn was for the worst, but I cannot agree because out of any event comes the opportunity to find or create something positive. I remember the incident vividly: walking across the road on my regular journey home, turning around at the sound of a house alarm to see what was happening, followed by the squeal of brake pads rubbing against tires and the indescribable pain that surged through my body as I made contact with the hood of the car that rendered me unconscious.

I awoke in the hospital with tubes in my nostrils and an IV in my vein. A nurse left and returned with a doctor who informed me I had been paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the accident. I had undergone surgery to mend my bones as much as possible, but I was told I would never walk again, much less run and play basketball. It felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer and shattered my world. Nausea hit me immediately; I was at a loss for what to do with my life. All my hard work felt insignificant and I knew of nothing else to do besides basketball. With no chance of making the scholarship I felt like my life had no purpose.

My memories of the time I spent in hospital are a haze of consciousness and sleep, in no small part due to the morphine I was administered to keep the pain at bay. Throughout this time nothing could cheer me up, and the sterility of my surroundings served as a constant reminder of my newfound situation, the wonderful life that had just ended and the bleak one I now faced. I don't like that much change. However, another unexpected event was just around the corner.

After being discharged from the hospital, I spent my days trying to adjust to being in a wheelchair and lift my morale. The shock of what happened hit me hard, as I believe it would to anyone, but my intrinsic optimism kept reminding me that life was not all over, that there was still fulfillment to be found; it was just a matter of finding it. I was simply searching for the positive outcome to a negative event that I knew existed. After a month of further recovery and adjustment, one of my former basketball teammates turned up at my house to show me something he thought I may be interested in. What he told me changed my outlook, gave me hope and I knew it was what I had been searching for, all in just two words: paraplegic basketball. Despite basketball being the one thing I had lived for, the idea of continuing to play, in a wheelchair, had eluded me, no doubt simply because of the devastation I had experienced. Yet now I had found a purpose in this new life, and I knew straight away this was the positive borne of my negative experience that I was always aware existed. With this in mind and a renewed sense of vigor I immediately began searching for the nearest paraplegic basketball team for which I could try out. As luck would have it, I found a team that practiced at a leisure center only eight blocks from my home.

Learning to play basketball in a wheelchair was a long, grueling process and it was a shock to me to now be the worst player rather than the best, but I was determined to improve. I practiced with the same motivation and ambition that I possessed before the accident, and although I knew I would never be offered a scholarship I found the training as important and enjoyable as I had done previously. I also felt the goal was more important than a scholarship; I was now playing strictly for my own enjoyment and to prove to myself and anyone else who cared to witness that my injury had not been the end of my life, but the start of a new one, filled with promise and ambition.