I heard the wood chips crunch under my feet as I sprinted towards safety. I glanced behind me and I saw my brother getting near. He always tried to tag me. He said it was because I was an “easy target.” But I was determined to change that.

I was closing in on the monkey bars when I looked behind me just in time to witness my brother trip over his own feet, and fall flat on his face. Unable to contain myself, I busted out laughing.

“You’ll never catch me now!” I shouted over my shoulder. Then, I realized I had spoken too soon. Within a few seconds, he was only a couple feet behind me. Panicking, I leaped onto the rungs of the monkey bars. I reached for the first bar, and momentarily forgot I was too short to reach the bars without jumping first.

Without thinking, I put my hands out in front of my body, trying to break the fall. SNAP! I shrieked in pain, grapping my arm. I squeezed it, hoping to stop the throbbing in my wrist. It didn’t work. I looked up and saw my brother standing over me, staring at me worriedly. I hated that look, and I hated being the cause of it.

As I rose to my feet, I choked back tears and tried to give him a smile that would wipe that sad look of his face. I wanted to show him I was alright, even though I wasn’t.

Before he could ask me if I was okay, I jogged past him, and feverishly searched for my mother. I stopped quickly, though. Running made my arm hurt. Badly. I was too distracted by the discomfort in my arm to notice my mother arriving at my side. She carried me to the car, and sat me on her lap, while my father drove us to the hospital.

I looked down at my arm, and studied it for a while. It was red and swollen, and had wood chips sticking out of it. I remembered how I love the way the chips sounded when I ran over them. They seemed light and harmless. But in that moment, they were dark. And more than anything, they were sharp.

At the hospital, the doctor announced it was a simple fracture and put me in a cast. Though the pain had later subsided, the frustration didn’t. What seemed effortless before was much more difficult now. I couldn’t write properly, I had to wear a bag over my arm when I bathed, and I couldn’t scratch my arm when it itched. I ended up jamming any sharp object I could find into my cast to try to relieve the itch, but nothing seemed to work.

Because of this incident, I have grown in other areas of my life. I have learned to be more careful, and think before I act. I have also discovered that even though some things don’t turn out the way I expect them to, it doesn’t mean my decision was a bad one.

As frustrating as breaking my arm was, I learned to deal with it—even though that meant doing some things differently than how I was used to. And before long, I was back to being myself, and ready to get back on the monkey bars.