You can do it, Rachel, I told myself as I visualized sticking the landing of my next skill. Trembling from anticipation, I wobbled, tightening my toes’ grip on the beam. No matter how many times I jumped, it never got easier, especially because of how high up I was. I took a deep breath and launched myself into the air. When I came back down, my foot missed the center and I slipped. My heart leapt into my throat as I fell to the mat beneath. I didn’t hit the ground before my leg scraped the side of the beam, leaving a scuff mark on it. Pain ripped through my thigh as I hit the floor flat on my back.

My coach came over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you ok?” she asked. I nodded, though hot tears slid down my cheeks.

“Let’s go to the office to check out your leg,” she urged. After sitting for a minute, I realized I wasn’t going to get any better by staying put. My leg screaming in protest, I took my coach’s outstretched hand and clumsily limped to the office. When I was settled into a chair, she went to get cream and a band-aid for my leg.

“It’ll take away the pain,” she insisted upon seeing my hesitant, resisting hand covering my wound as she went to apply it.

I slowly replied, “okay,” and moved my hand away, clamping my eyes shut. When the cream touched my skin, its coolness soothed my seething wound and calmed my worries.

“Do you want to go see your scuff mark?” my coach asked, smiling. My pain forgotten, I raced to the beam to see the legacy I had left behind.

My gymnastics team had a tradition that most gymnasts went through to claim their place on the team. It wasn’t something you planned or prepared for, it was simply something we all went through at one time or another. This tradition happened on the high beam. It had scuff marks on it from gymnasts falling and hitting it with the side of their legs on the way down. When you fell, you made your very own scuff mark and, in return, became an official member of the team. The day I fell, I left my mark on the beam. I had proven that I was a true gymnast.

When my illness hit in the summer of 2014, I remember feeling the same heart wrenching sensation as I did when I fell from that beam as an 8 year old. Nothing my parents or I could do would stop it from knocking me on my back. I felt hopeless and confused. Abdominal pain one thousand times worse than my little scrape would tear through my stomach, forcing me to lose whatever I had eaten earlier in the day and cry out, begging for relief. There was no escaping it and nothing I could do to prepare for it. When I went to doctors, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Everywhere I went, I felt my cries getting crushed by the waves of the torrent life had sent my way.

Each time I felt that I had regained my footing, something else was taken from me. First it was my ability to eat, then my ability to appear normal. Then it took my role in a school play and finally, my ability to walk. My organs were shutting down one by one with no explanation and no cure or treatment in sight. I was completely helpless. Because of this, it soon threatened to even take away my purpose. I became angry and bitter with everyone and everything. Most of all, I was angry at myself. I was angry that I had let myself be knocked down. I hated that I wasn’t the same person I had been before such pain shook my world, and I hated that I couldn’t pick up the pieces of my shattered life.

As an 8 year old, I was ignorant to the pain life would bring, but even then, I had enough experience to fear what might come. Although the initial sting of my scrape had faded, the ever-present throbbing of the bruise left in its wake made sure to remind me of the past harm I had endured. When it came time to get back on the beam, I was scared. I feared getting hurt again. I didn’t want to wind up in the same place I had just been: a failure. The two and a half years following the onset of my illness, I struggled with fear. Fear of the future and of what I might lose. There have been days when the fear was so crippling that I felt defeated before I even began. I held tight to what little shards of my previous life I had left. People would tell me, “You can either wallow in self-pity or you can make something of yourself.” They would urge me to get up. I felt that it was hypocritical and unfair of them to tell me how I should respond to my pain. After all, they weren’t the one with tubes being shoved in their stomach, their life being stolen without anyone trying to stop it. What I realized, however, was that I wasn’t ever going to get anywhere by not trying. By letting fear win, I was forfeiting the battle before I even gave myself a chance to succeed.

Looking back, I realize that it was never the fall that made me a true gymnast that day. The scuff mark didn’t matter because it signified a girl who missed her foot on a landing and slipped. It mattered because it was the mark of a girl who refused to stay down. No one looks up to the person who stopped fighting. No one remembers the person who gave in, and I didn’t want to be that person. However, when you’re next door neighbors to her, it’s hard to stop the sounds of her cries from reaching you through the walls. I couldn’t just pound on her door and tell her to be quiet, because her broken heart was my heart, her bruised and battered spirit, my spirit. Her wounds and scars are engraved in my flesh. What changed, however, is I realized that I wanted to leave a much more important mark on the world than I did on that beam, and I didn’t want it to be the mark of someone who fell.

When I was tempted to leave practice that day without giving it another shot, my coach pushed me to get back up and try again. It wasn’t because she didn’t understand my pain, because she had been through it. She had her very own scuff mark before any of my fellow gymnasts ever touched the beam. She went through it before, my very wounds engraved in her own flesh. She knew how much it hurt and how hard it was to get back up. Even though at first I did not want to accept her help, her hand was outstretched still. She knew exactly what to do to calm my worries and to take away the sting of my pain, so that I could get back up and reach my full potential.

While I regained my ability to walk, my first steps were clumsy and small. However, they took me farther than I ever would have gotten by staying put. You won’t always succeed and I can guarantee you will fall. There will be hard days. You will encounter trials that shake the very ground your feet are planted on. You will find yourself down on the mat at some point or another, but you must find the strength to get back up. Despite the throbbing in your leg, despite the protests of the girl who wants nothing more than to rest, you must endure and continue on. But I for one, refuse to leave this world without getting back up on that beam and fighting until my feet land dead center. In the end, I want to be able to look up at my coach and say, “I did it!” It will never be easy, especially when the stakes are high and the waters are rough, with seemingly no answers in sight, but my legacy, my mark on the world at the close of this life, will be much greater than a scuff mark.

For more on Rachel Nielsen’s Journey