When I was eleven, attending school in Shanghai, I was in a wheelchair after being in an accident, and soon after, I faced my roommate’s suicide attempt, forcing me to find strength in a foreign country.
In films, when someone is dying or in pain, their eyes flutter, and the world fades in and out of color. They are unwound and removed from their suffering. I wasn’t given that mercy. I could hear everything. I could see everything. I could feel every grain of turf pressing into my back, and above me, the full weight of a metal goalpost that had fallen, trapping me beneath it. Its frame tugged at my hair and pressed through me as if trying to reach the ground. My ribs were giving way, my heart struggling to keep its rhythm. I wished I could tell the enormous metal above me that I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant to be in its path, but I couldn’t move. The sirens tried to quiet my thoughts. Eight men grunted as they lifted the corners. If the goalpost had recognized my pain, I wondered whether it would have lightened its weight, just enough for me to breathe.
Three months earlier, I would have been sitting outside my fifth-grade classroom, giggling uncontrollably. I hadn’t been laughing at anything serious, a ladybug crawling in circles, or a boy zoning out with crossed eyes. I had been sent out of class more than once, but I didn’t mind. I loved my capacity for joy. I couldn’t have imagined that those little things, the bugs, the laughter, the lightness, would soon vanish. That I would leave that world behind and enter one I didn’t understand.
The goalpost didn’t just crush my body; it shattered something invisible. I spent weeks in a wheelchair, watching nurses move around me and feeling the smallness of my own existence. I was eleven, in a foreign country, far from home, trying to piece together a body and a sense of safety that no longer felt like mine.
A few days later, when I returned to my dorm, I noticed ambulances at the door. At first, I thought they were for me, but I soon realized they weren’t. My roommate had tried to take her own life. The paramedics moved aside the ropes hanging from our ceiling fan as I stood frozen, unable to comprehend it. Even though we had known each other for only a few days, I wished she had said something. Her twin sister was outside, crying and explaining to the officers. Despite my fear, I felt like an intruder in her pain. Did she come here, to the other side of the world, just to leave it behind?
I could still feel the rope in my hands and hear the sobs echoing through the hallway. I was just a child, but in that moment, I learned a new feeling: despair. I learned that it often hides in the spaces between the words people don’t say. My roommate had tried to befriend death, taking her suffering into her own arms. I, too, had faced death, but unlike her, I hadn’t tried to meet it. I had been humbled by it, forced to sit still and listen. She reached for escape; I had been told to stay.
As a child, I had been taught that pain was temporary, that a sticker or ice cream could make it better. But as I grew, I realized that those comforts dissolve quickly. Healing wasn’t about distraction; it was about facing what I most wanted to run from.
Resilience didn’t arrive as a heroic burst. It was slow, uncertain, and full of doubt. It looked like learning to walk again. It sounded like laughter returning after months of silence. It felt like noticing a ladybug land on my knee and realizing, somehow, I was still here to feel it.
I remember the first time I walked back onto a bus after recovery. My knees trembled as I climbed the steps, my body feeling foreign and unsteady. I sat in the first seat, still aching, still afraid. Then a tiny red ladybug landed on my thigh, making my leg tingle. I brushed it gently away, watching it swirl back into the sunlight.
That small moment had been everything. The world had changed, but the ladybugs were still there, proving that life went on in quiet, ordinary ways.
For years, I carried the weight, the sound of metal, the image of the rope, the fear of being crushed again. But I also carried a new understanding: survival isn’t just living through tragedy. It’s rebuilding the part of yourself that believes joy is possible again. My journey into adulthood became, in many ways, the journey of maintaining the freedom of my childhood soul.
When I faced these challenges, resilience was a slow burn; it came from slowing down and reconnecting with the world around me. After the accident and my roommate’s attempt, I was overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. At first, I felt small and powerless, as if life had shrunk to the weight of my own body and the events I couldn’t control. But over time, I began to notice the small things I had once let pass over me: the way sunlight filtered through a window, the sound of rain on the roof, or a ladybug crawling across my hand. These moments reminded me that life continued, even in the midst of difficulty. I learned to focus on stillness, letting awareness of the subtle things guide me back to a sense of safety and calm. I allowed myself to slow my breathing, to notice my surroundings, and to find joy in simple, ordinary things. By anchoring myself in the present and appreciating these details, I rebuilt my strength, step by step. Resilience became choosing to remain open to noticing beauty and finding peace even when I wanted to hide inside myself.
Find strength in small blessings, stay open to life’s lessons, and trust that peace can always be found so long as you are open to finding it.
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