The Oddest Thing She's Ever Said

You know, cheap pizza and a good bottle of wine is a perfectly acceptable meal. If there’s anything living in Italy taught me, it’s that.

XOXO

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amoammo:

I can never run for senator. There’s nudes out there of mine…

Secondeddddd. 

We seem to like our politicians like we liked our priests…with absolutely no sex lives.

AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT US.

XOXO

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When I was 14, I finally— after years of campaigning, begging, pleading, and coaxing riding lessons out of my parents— got my own horse. At first, we didn’t exactly get along. We were too similar. Both diminutive with over-large personalities to make up for stature. Both blonde, and convinced that that meant we deserved something more in life. Both a little punk-rock— I incorporated my love of all things studded and black into our show bridle; since a mane-roaching incident in her early years, my horse has always maintained a perfectly coiffed mohawk. We both had strong opinions of what we should be doing: I was Olympic or bust; she spent most of her time plotting how to craft a hole in her grazing muzzle so she could eat more while hoping for increased pasture time.

For the first two years, there were a lot of highs, and a lot of lows. I met Olympians. I trained with Olympians. I spent over 250 days a year at the barn. There were a lot of tears. We fought each other constantly before settling on uneasy truces. I fell off mid-jump course enough times to realize my horse could see better distances than I could, and I was better off letting her take the reins, and just holding tight, sitting pretty, and smiling for the judge. She chewed more holes in more muzzles, got fatter, and ended up paying for it with more conditioning gallops up and down the hills around the barn. We ended up growing exceptionally close through adversity, conflict, and mutual resolution. Some days, I won; some days, she won. I found conceding defeat to a pint-sized pony with a mohawk and an attitude problem was a good medication to my growing show-ego.

After that, for awhile, we were an ultimate team. We put the mileage down to prove it across New York and the North East. To this day, the majority of results you find if you Google me are show results from those years. They’re not too shabby, either. But after awhile, the rush of competition started to lose its thrill, and the 4 AM mornings and hours spent anxiously watching the trailer behind us from the cramped backseat of the farm’s truck was replaced by quiet moments at the barn— late night rides after work when my trainer and I were the only people left.

Though I was un-diagnosed at the time, I’ve struggled with hereditary depression and the side effects of self-harming obsessive-compulsive disorder since my early teens. Before Zoloft, the feeling I got while riding at 8 o’clock at night, thoroughly exhausted, when everything came together and I could feel my SuperPony softening on the bit and accepting it; when energy and movement flowed freely between us into perfect leg-yields, turns on the fore, turns on the hind, collected canters, and that one, perfect, perfect moment of canter-pirouette while making a turn on a jump course— that was what kept me sane. If my hands were on the reins, I couldn’t be pulling my hair out of my head in chunks (which I did). If I was so completely focused on putting 4 strides between two jumps instead of 5 that I forgot to breathe, I sure as hell couldn’t let the intense, extreme and overwhelming fears of social awkwardness, adrift-ness, and emptiness that usually bombarded me register. To this day, I have no doubt that my horse gave better results than any therapist could have, had my mother acknowledged at the time my issues. Instead, someone with 4 legs who stands 14.1 hands (without shoes!) did, and filled the parts of me that I hated with something else in those moments— elation, which I did not, at the time, think was possible.

And in the years since— while in college and too busy trying to get the grades that the institution and my parents expected; while abroad and a complete fish out of water in the land of Marinara; and now, post-grad, presently medicated, and totally at a loss about where to go with my life— nothing’s changed about that feeling, and the power that is has to move me. Even if I can’t make the trip to the barn for a month, or even two or three, what keeps me going on the worse days, or every time I anxiously wait for a plane to take off while being 110% certain that this one will be the one whose engine fails and goes down, or when I am convinced that my landlord hates me, my bank would love to kill me, my friends have given up on me, and it’s just not enough to be my parent’s daughter or my incredible partner’s girlfriend, knowing that my horse— another living being who can read my emotions and my intentions so well when we work that I whole-heartedly believe that those amazing creatures are in fact sensitive enough to feel your gaze shift and respond to that— has for years and continues to accept and heal me within half an hour of quiet, silent, affectionate understanding…that is what gets me through. 

Some people don’t, and can’t, understand this. They have never been and will never be an equestrian. Other riders may not have found their perfect equine partner yet. Some have. They’ll tell you their horse is like their child. They’ll tell you it’s like falling in love at first sight. Like finding a soul mate on four legs. Like being one— a centaur in the dressage ring. They’ll tell you that their horse’s courage gave them the courage to believe that they could make it through and Intermediate cross country course alive. They’ll say that their horse saved them, time and time again, when friends and family couldn’t. At various times in my life, I could tell you that all of the above statements have been true for me at one time or another, but the biggest and best thing that my horse has given me was a feeling of complete and utter perfect, clear normality, even when my own mind wouldn’t give me that freedom. She did, and that’s why I treasure her so much— she showed me the emotionally-rich and happy person that I had the ability to be and have become. And for that, I think I owe it to her to stick with her through the hard times, since she was there through mine.

A horse is not just an animal; to its rider, it is an extension of themselves, their heart, their body. When I have one of those truly great rides— those once-a-year rides when someone passing stops to watch because it just looks so. damn. EASY…I have no idea where I end and where she begins. Can you tell me, with a bond like that, where do you decide to sever it?

XOXO

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