THE BEST THING I’VE EVER DONE IS BREAK MY ARM.

Well actually it was my shoulder, but same limb same deal, right?

But welcome to June! Congratulations to all who are reading these words - for we have ‘successfully’ carried on surviving throughout the madness of the year of 2020 (so far…)

I use the inverted commas here because how can we define ‘successfully’?

Personally speaking, I cannot say these past few months were particularly successful in any definition.

But I guess the fact that I am here kicking, has some meaning.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger they say. Which leads me back into the story of today’s blog. Let me ask you a question.

Is there a moment in your life that you can look back at and think:

“Because this happened I learned more about myself. I was able to grow”?

Even if what happened was pretty shit at the time.

I’m not talking necessarily about an experience, but more about a moment.

Something you saw perhaps. Or maybe something you heard from someone, or something you did - or absolutely anything!

For me, that moment was breaking my shoulder in the winter of 2015.

For my close friends, many of you have probably heard this story. So my apologies in advance.

--- START FLASHBACK SCENE ---

It was January. I was snowboarding in the Japanese alps, heading back to the staff dormitory after working at my ski lift job all day.

It hadn’t stopped snowing until late afternoon. The powder snow reached past my knees and following behind my co-workers down the mountain I felt like I was floating. The snow that fell from the trees in the light breeze caught in the setting sun and glittered like diamond dust.

It was really just an average day living and working in the alps.

At this time I had probably been snowboarding just over a month.

The snow was so soft, giving me a little confidence to push myself to keep up with my co-workers.

Even if I fell on my ass (as I always did) it wouldn’t hurt so much.

Or so I told myself.

But as I caught up to the tails of their snowboards I caught an edge on my own board which threw off my balance and sent me smashing into the snow. Tears instantly burst into my eyes and a jolt shook up my left arm which I had landed on.

I sat still for a moment, the sound of my heart unnaturally loud in my ears among the silence of the mountainscape. “Jessica! Dai-jyou-bu?” (Jessica, are you okay?) Izumi-san called out. She and the three guys I worked with that day had stopped over 500 meters away down the mountain.

I blinked back the tears and tried to clear my vision before adjusting the goggles on my face and pushing myself upright.

"Dai-jyou-bu de-su!" (I’m okay!) I called back, absently brushing the snow off myself with my right hand and giving a small jump so my board faced vertically down the mountain.

In a few moments I was beside my co-workers and we stood side-by-side looking down the bottom of the slope at the sunset.

“O-ma-ta-se!” (Sorry for the wait!) My voice sounded slightly breathless.

And then we set off down the mountain again leaving a spray of snow in our wake.

--- END FLASHBACK SCENE ---

At the time I didn’t really think much of that injured arm.

In fact, I believed I had just sprained it and the very next day at work I cleared snow and swept seats like every other day.

It wasn’t until six months later when I finally returned to Australia and decided I should probably get my shoulder checked out that I was informed I had broken it.

I will always remember the doctor pointing at my Xrays and explaining what I did to myself.

“You shattered your shoulder. See here, these are bone splinters. Your muscle tore bone fragments off when you fell.”

“Ah. I guess that’s why it hurt then…?” I had mumbled more to myself than to the doctor.

He had looked at me a moment and then and continued to explain that this could probably give me trouble in the future.

I remember feeling oddly proud that I had finally broken a bone at 20 years of age.

Is that really something to be proud of? But it felt like a delayed write-a-passage and a ticket towards badassery?

Even if the fall was pretty lame.

----

However, after injuring myself it became difficult to snowboard.

This was of no relation to the fact that I could no longer lift my arm above my head without feeling a sickly pain.

I kept thinking I would fall again (as I always did).

And that it would hurt even more. Yet contradictorily, because I thought I would fall I kept falling all the more.

My mind was making me fail before I even fully tried. I would purposely crash before I gained too much speed like the small crash would save me from a possibly larger crash that could hurt me far worse.

Self-preservation instinct had kicked in? It was frustrating. I felt like my body had started to react on its own, stiffening at each carve of my snowboard like it was readying for impact into the snow. My heart was always racing and my palms clenched tight.

I hated feeling like I had no control over my fear.

So I just kept snowboarding. As much as I could. Even though I was terrified.

It took over a month to quell my body’s instinct to stiffen in fear.

But now I can honestly say I am thankful for breaking a bone when I did, back when I first started to snowboard.

Since after hurting yourself like that, then reflecting back on how it wasn’t really as bad as you first imagined a broken bone to be, you gain a little fearlessness.

After all, what you thought was scary wasn’t that bad. Other scary things might not be that bad too? Now I enjoy falling across rails, rolling down 12-meter kicker jumps, and faceplanting after failed 180 attempts.

I fall all the time. All. The. Time.

But I think if I never broke my shoulder, perhaps I would have always been fearful of breaking a bone - of facing that unknown pain.

We are scared easily from what is unknown. But falling once you learn how not to fall again that same way.

And that perhaps it wasn’t as painful as you imagined it would be. We tend to imagine the worst.

But still falling sucks.

But each time you do, you become all the more motivated not to fall again.

You improve yourself with the aim to not fall (well as much...)

---

Before actually breaking my shoulder I was always worried I would hurt myself.

I snowboarded with caution and tried to never crash and fall.

But the thing is, you have to crash and fall.

Not just in snowboarding.

But in everything you do.

Because it teaches you so much.

You can see where you were going wrong. You can discover your limits (and how far you can push them). You can learn how to stand up more quickly and push through the pain. So now, I actually love to fall. I aim to fall as much as possible in life.

Because I know that if I am not screwing up and crashing and feeling even a little pain, I am also never getting better and improving.

I would rather try and crash and break things than always be afraid of something that may never happen. And I guess it took breaking my shoulder to make me realise all this.

Something that is probably quite obvious. I guess I’m just a dumbass.

But at least I got a story to share.