Someday Daniel O'Steen may find the answers he seeks, though the Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School senior realizes deep down - more so, likely, than most his age - that there are some things in life that have no explanation.
What is concrete fact is the devotion he has for his LFO football teammates, even though he hasn't suited up in more than two years. O'Steen, a former quarterback, doesn't play the sport any longer, mostly a decision made for him by two complete knee reconstructions barely a year apart.
For most high school athletes, having your passion ripped away can be devastating. For Daniel O'Steen, it was just part of a 12-month period in which he nearly lost everything.
Yet it is also an ongoing journey of self-discovery that has, according to those who know him, turned an immature teenager into a role model whose future is as bright as his recent past was dark.
Daniel O'Steen prepares to shoot video Tuesday at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe's football practice.Play ripped away
"I grew up around football, and I never remember a time when football wasn't there, and I always wanted to play," the 6-foot-3 O'Steen said in a rare quiet moment in the LFO fieldhouse. "My mom wouldn't let me play tackle football until the sixth grade. When I was old enough, I played until I couldn't anymore."
That realization came on the fifth play of LFO's first junior varsity game a year ago. Having been fully cleared for contact after tearing his right ACL, LCL, PCL and meniscus the year before when he stepped into a hole on the practice field, Osteen took a snap, kept the ball on an option play and, as he was being tackled, felt the all-too-familiar pain in his knee.
"I immediately knew what it was before I even rolled over," he said, stretching out his right leg at the memory. "That was the first time since I learned how to control my emotions that I cried on the football field.
"It wasn't about the pain, because I understood about that already. It was just really difficult knowing right then that there was a very good chance that I wouldn't be able to do something any longer that I had poured so much into."
O'Steen, knowing what was to come, informed his mother, coaches and teammates that if another surgery was coming he was going to give up the sport. Turns out, he really didn't have much of a decision to make after a second full reconstruction was performed.
"His surgeon told him he needed to pick another sport," mom Ann Cunningham said. "He accepted it, but it was difficult because he loves football. He started asking to play tackle football in the second grade, but I made him wait. Had I known he was not going to get to play in high school I might have let him play earlier."
Family pain
Maybe Daniel was able to accept his athletic fate so completely because of what had happened during the previous 12 months.
Ann, who rarely had been sick in her life, was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy not long after Daniel's first surgery.
"It was totally out of the blue," Daniel recalled. "She is the most healthy person I've ever met, and the doctors even said she was the most naturally healthy person to have stage four cancer they had ever encountered.
"She had such a great attitude about it, even joking when people asked her what happened and telling them her breasts tried to kill her so she had them cut off. That's just my mom. She's my role model all the time. It's crazy to have someone so strong in my life."
That strength was put to an extreme test in May 2017 when Daniel's stepfather, Mark Cunningham, suddenly died of a massive heart attack.
Ann and Mark met in high school, and several years after Ann and Lane O'Steen divorced the two were reunited when Mark moved into the Ringgold area. A teacher, musician and author, Mark Cunningham quickly took to Daniel and his younger brother, Charlie.
"Mark had never had any children, so when he married into a family with boys, he was ecstatic," Ann recalled. "Finally, he was a dad. He had coached football and taught junior high school, so he knew how to engage with boys. He was a musician and related so well with the kids. They loved him from the first time they met him."
It also helped that Mark and Lane became friends, so much so that one of their routines is among Daniel's favorite memories.
"My dad and my stepdad had a wonderful relationship," Daniel recalled. "It was the funniest thing how close they were, and my dad used to joke about it. He would walk up and he and Mark would hug, and then my dad would shake my mom's hand. Everybody would laugh, and it was so great and so unusual that they genuinely got along so well."
It was Lane who had to break the news of Mark's death to Daniel, who at that time was just a few weeks from testing his knee at summer workouts.
"It was the last day of school," he said with a crack in his voice. "I was on the track and we were walking and hanging out. I got called up to the office, and I knew something was up because the last time that happened I lost one of my grandparents.
"At the time, my stepdad was completely healthy, so I expected it to be something wrong with my mom, who was still recovering from the surgery. I got up to the office, and it was one of the few times I saw my dad cry. We started walking the front path at the school, and he told me Mark died. I collapsed on the front sidewalk. I just went numb. We got to the hospital and I walked into the waiting room, and my mom just collapsed into my arms.
"It was a horrible time."
Daniel O'Steen has found a different sort of enjoyment from football as an assistant to the Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe team after previously playing for the Warriors.Staying involved
Daniel O'Steen may have lost the ability to play football, but the sport hasn't left him. It has, in fact, helped save him.
Go by LFO during the week and you will see the former player doing video work during practice. Though he works a few days a week, he finds time to help break down special-teams video and to work with talented sophomore starting quarterback Malachi Powell on his reads.
On game nights he helps keep Powell calm during stressful parts of games while also hanging around the offensive coaches and soaking up the experience. Head coach Bo Campbell knew this was a kid he wanted around his program in some capacity.
"He's here every day and is just as big a part of the team as any player or coach," Campbell said. "What amazes me about Daniel is his outlook on life as a young man. Many young kids with that many bad times in their lives, a lot of kids think about the easy way out, but Daniel has always seen the positive in life. I respect him and admire him a lot for how he's handled everything, and there's not a kid on this team that doesn't look up to him."
O'Steen isn't sure how much he has helped the Warriors, who are 5-2 after winning only one game his first two years in school, but he's certain how much the team has helped him. Coaches often speak of a football team being a brotherhood. Daniel O'Steen is living proof.
"I don't know how I would have handled everything if I had quit being a part of the team after my injuries," he said. "I had all of my coaches, who are the most wonderful people you would ever meet, and I had a relationship with every single member of the team.
"It was crazy how much support was shown me. It seemed like they all just understood the best way to go about it. They didn't ask questions or poke and prod. They just kept me busy. There has never been a day that I have regretted staying around to help the team."
The experience could, O'Steen says, come into play later in life. Though he doesn't see himself being a full-time coach, he would love to volunteer as a coach once his career gets going. That career likely will involve automobiles in some way, he says now.
"Right now, I'm thinking about majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in journalism," he said. "I've always loved cars, and I remember always having a ton of Hot Wheels around to play with. Ideally, I would wind up working with a car company in motorsports or work in automotive journalism, testing cars and writing about them and keeping up with the changes."
Finding some peace
These are better times for Daniel and his mom, though it doesn't take much for the bad stuff to start creeping into their minds. Football will end soon - Daniel is counting on it including a playoff game ("it would be a fairy-tale ending," he said) - and the holidays are approaching.
He knows it will be a tough time. Lost ones often are missed the most around Christmas, and inevitably the questions that gnaw at him like a persistent toothache will yearn again to be answered.
Why did he have to give up football? Why did his mom have to get cancer? Why won't his stepfather be around for Christmas?
"I still have trouble with it sometimes," he admits. "I grew up Christian, and it was very hard for a long time trying to justify any of it. I would find myself asking 'Why?' all the time. Everybody says God has a purpose, but I just didn't understand why all this happened during the same period of time. What is the reasoning for all of it?
"I still haven't found a reason, but I have found more peace about it, and I guess that's all anyone could ask."
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6296; follow on Twitter @youngsports22.