It is finally time, I am at my next contest, I am going to show off my new trick and honestly, I am aiming for gold. I want to be able to say I at least came first once and it feels like now is the perfect time, to show a new trick, to hopefully inspire the next generation of skaters, to maybe leave something meaningful behind and not just a contest record and tapes, something that will maybe inspire a new trick from someone else. I meet my team and the others as we wait our turn. I don’t think of them as pros any more, but friends. My friends that I still can’t believe I have. Even Tommy Eagle talks to me as if I belong. I am not fangirling any more, I am just with my peers, now it is time to skate.

It is early into my run when it happens, I am not sure what caused it but the wheels don’t stick and I lose control at speed. The board is gone and not even the adrenaline is enough to stop all the pain as I scream. Everything stops, my mind is going to explode, I can’t process anything as something moves through my throat and splatters me. Colours rush towards me, colours drain from me and I shiver. Just chaos racing through every fibre of me until something sharp hits me and it starts to slowly fade. My last thoughts are of the gold once again slipping through my fingers. This was meant to be the run, it was meant to be this one where I managed to show I can do this. I can prove myself worthy of not just being here but standing at the peak. I worked so hard and now? Now I…

That was my last thoughts as a skater. I had given everything I could and it still didn’t feel like enough. I was reaching for the stars surrounded by people that cared about me, more than anything, those that would just come up and give me a hug at competitions, those that advised me and shared new ideas and I tried to give input back. My new trick I wanted to show here was never done, that was where I was planning to end this run, the run to try and truly reach for the stars.

I just wanted to be accepted. I wanted to show I was worthy to be here. I have heard that bronze is the best place on the podium, you are just happy to reach it but I tasted silver and was so close, so close to being on the top and wanted at least once to prove to myself and others that I could do it, that girls are just as worthy of skating.

In the end it doesn’t matter, why would it matter? I failed. I failed so badly that all I had left was emptiness and that is what I woke up to, well that and a tube in my mouth. It started with a light feeling. The feeling of just, feeling too much as I scrunched up my eye lids before opening them and shutting them, too much light. It took a bit of time until I adjusted, naturally I was in a hospital room, a lot of flowers, some even wilting. How long has it been? I can’t really move, I am not sure how much of my body is even on the bed. I try to make any sounds but the tube down my throat prevents much, I still try screaming. What is going on? What happened? Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

That question haunts me. I have done that drop into a ramp so many times that it should have been routine. Had I done something wrong? Was it the pressure? Was it something wrong with my board? Was it the surface? Was it something else? Would anyone even tell me if I fucked up that badly?

“Celia?” a quiet voice releases into the room, it is quivering, mum…

I turn my head slightly and see her, the red eyes, the signs of not sleeping, the state of someone that feared everything and anything could happen. I did this. I caused all this by following a dream, and that’s the sad thing, I still want to skate. I know I am likely badly injured but it just calls to me like a light that shines through a tunnel giving you hope that maybe life isn’t that bad.

It turns out it is...

I have been sedated for a while due to the fact that the bones in my legs were so mangled that being awake for it would be torture. The surgeons had saved them but walking, skating, they would be a large uncertainty. I would need more surgeries, how many more? Even they couldn’t say. They won’t remove the tube, I am on higher oxygen and from all the medication flowing through my veins makes them worry I will have depressed breathing or something. They used a lot of fancy words I don’t understand, but basically they worry I will stop breathing without air forced in and out. Not even controlling my breathing is awful. Like I am just some tube to be filled then emptied. I still feel it, even with all the drugs in my systems I still feel pain. I can think through it but pain. Pain, pain, pain. The pain that gnaws at my mind. There is no escape, they need me to get use to being in the land of the living, thinking, feeling, suffering…

I have visitors but when you can’t speak and can’t even cry there isn’t much you can do. I struggle, it is hard to call them friends when I don’t see myself as one of them any more. I am not the skater they knew, but plain old Celia Roberts. A broken shell of what I once was. Broken beyond repair it feels and their words are hollow no matter how much kindness they give, no matter how much they hug me or cry for me. What does it mean to just be Celia? I gave up on that so long ago when I managed my first ollie. That was the moment I truly felt like I became a skater, I had done the most basic trick and everything started with that.

Now there was no skating, it was like I wasn’t there. I was trapped here.

I am trapped in this shell.

Let me out.

Please...