1. Best experience of my life..do I regret it?

Even I cannot tell if I regret cheerleading or not.  It was an obsession.  It consumed my mind.  It taught me how far I could push my body with the asthma attacks, sprains, pain, splits, and sore muscles.  It taught me that anything is possible.  The videos of people doing flips or the people at the gym pulling the crazy stunts are not impossible.  My coaches taught me that very quickly with help, it's honestly not that hard.

Once I started getting into it, I was absolutely obsessed.  I would go tumbling camps my coach held for four hours every day for a week at a time.  It was absolute heaven to me.  I would wake up too sore to move, but enjoy every second of it.  The adrenaline rush of knowing that I pushed so hard and learned a new skill was euphoric and I knew that no other sport could fufill this sensation.

Learning how to do too much too fast ended up screwing me over.  I always had some kind of injury.  My sprained ankle lasted for 8 months because I kept practicing even though it was painful.  I was practicing but not progressing.  Right after my ankle healed and I got all my tumbling where it should have been, my back started hurting..but a lot.  It got to the point where one handspring would be so painful that there would be no power left to do anything out of it which would result in me falling on my face..literally.

I was finally confronted by my parents that after a year of cheering with my back hurting and no signs of improvement that my career was over.  This was before high school even.  It bothers me so much to this day wondering what I could have accomplished with these three years plus the time I spent injured and not working on new skills.  My workouts are all trampoline to reinforce what I already know and the skills I taught myself with the drive of my obsession.  This sport was absolutely my life and helped me define myself but I can never help but wonder what it would be like if I never touched it and found a sport that is less adrenaline-based that could have satisfied me the same way.