الرياضة عشق - الجزء ٢/١

My name is Alaa Mansour. I love sports and photography, and I enjoy keeping up with the latest developments in the world of technology. This is my story about sports and running—“Sports Are My Passion.” You can follow me on the following social media accounts:

My page on Instagram

The Beginnings

When I was young, I was a cheerful, energetic, and outstanding child. I was cheerful—I loved to laugh and play—and so energetic that I would often annoy my parents and cause them worry. I excelled in both academics and sports, settling for nothing less than first place and the highest grades. I had a knack for learning quickly, especially when it came to sports. I mastered soccer, basketball, volleyball, baseball, tennis, and table tennis. My mother enrolled me in the Amman Little League for a period of about nine consecutive years, in addition to other sports academies, where I stood out as one of the best players in most of them.

When I was nine years old, I started getting sick all the time. My mother took me to several doctors, and their diagnosis was mostly the same: that, thank God, I was in good health, but my immune system was still somewhat weak and would improve as time went on and I got older. Most of them advised us to take some vitamins to boost my immune system.

I started taking vitamins; I didn’t know they would become a curse that would haunt me for years to come. My weight increased rapidly and steadily, until I became an easy target for my classmates to bully. Because I was so young, I didn’t have the strength to stand up to them or push them away. Little by little, this began to take its toll on my personality. That once cheerful, energetic child became introverted and isolated, with no desire to interact with other children my age. I found my room to be the perfect place to retreat to, far from their bullying, whispers, and taunts. Video games became my source of entertainment, and I spent my best moments with my family and a few close friends, as I felt comfortable around them and could just be myself. This continued until I was about fifteen years old, when I began playing basketball more intensively—a sport I had played only timidly in previous years. and because of my talent, I joined the youth team of one of Jordan’s top clubs, Al-Jazeera Club, for which I played for about a year before transferring to Al-Riyadi Club shortly after its founding.

One day during the blessed month of Ramadan in 2004, I was leaving my house to hail a taxi to take me to the arcade where I was meeting my friends. Some kids from the neighborhood where I lived stopped me and started bullying me. I flew into a rage, lost my temper, and could no longer control myself. I got into a fight with them; I hit them and was hit in return. Shop owners came out to intervene and break up the fight, but they were unsuccessful, as there were more than a dozen of them, while I was with my brother, two of my relatives, and two of their friends. The fight continued and the blows grew more intense until one of them shoved me, causing me to lose my balance. I tried to regain control, but I couldn’t avoid falling into a small hole that was right behind me. The result of that brawl was a compound fracture of my ankle. I underwent surgery that required the insertion of metal screws, and my foot was placed in a cast for three months, followed by four months of physical therapy until my broken foot recovered. The fracture itself wasn’t the biggest problem for me; rather, it was the frustration that came with it, which only grew weight My weight had exceeded 100 kilograms, and my interactions with the people around me had gotten worse. Sometimes I could sense their laughter; sometimes I saw it with my own eyes; and at other times, I just imagined it. It was clear to me that they were avoiding any kind of interaction with me. Anger flared up inside me at the way they treated me and judged me solely based on my appearance and my weight.

In April 2006, I opened my eyes early one morning—earlier than usual. My room was still dark; the morning sun hadn’t reached it yet. Before I even got out of bed, I had already decided that I would put an end to the lifestyle I’d been living and start a new life right then and there. I decided to completely transform my appearance, And why not? I know it will take a long time and strong determination. I know it will mean a lot of fatigue and, at times, going without food, but I’m going to do it, and I won’t stop until I achieve that goal. The first decision I made in this regard was to walk to and from school—four kilometers in the morning and another four in the evening. Each trip took about forty-five minutes. I would leave early in the morning to play basketball with my friends before the first class started, and I was always the first to join in any game during breaks. I also started following a strict diet under my mother’s guidance, as she knew a lot about this subject.

Then came the summer vacation, with its warm nights and outdoor gatherings, and I began to step up my exercise routine, motivated by the fifteen kilograms I had already lost between April and May of that year, before the summer vacation began. I started going to the gym every day from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., and then I’d go play basketball with my friends until 11 p.m. This routine continued until the end of the summer.

The change in my appearance had become obvious to everyone who saw me. Every comment I heard about how much I’d changed fueled my enthusiasm to keep going with what I’d started, and, driven by that enthusiasm, I joined a martial arts club. On one of my first days of training, the instructor asked me to measure my weight and body fat percentage. I was overjoyed when I saw that I had lost thirty-five kilograms, and my body fat percentage had dropped from thirty-three percent to just eleven percent.

I became a new person, as if I had just been born; there was no trace left of that old, overweight person. My spirits soared, and my cheerful disposition returned. I never suffered from bullying again, but I made a decision: I would never let anyone go through what I went through. I will never judge anyone at first glance; from now on, I will judge by substance, not appearance.