Most of the time on New Year’s, I wind up making a post
about the good things that have happened to me over the course of the year,
though it doesn’t often wind up on this blog or shared on Facebook. Most of the
time, I wind up making a list of all the positives in my life in some attempt
to make the past year feel like it was more good than bad. This is not one of
those times (not in its usual form, anyway).
This year, I want to talk about something that happened last
week (and some things that happened a long, long time ago).
Around this time twelve years ago (good lord, it’s been
twelve years), I had a homemade calendar up in my bedroom (though I can’t remember
whether it was hung on the wall or the side of my bunk bed). I was crossing off
the days, one by one, in anticipation of something that I’d been begging for:
my first riding lesson.
I don’t remember what the date of it was, though you’d think
that I would given how important it was to me. All I remember is that we went
to a barn and my parents talked to the owner and we set up my first lesson, and
all I could do after that was wait. I marked off one day after the next, and I
flipped through every horse book I owned (as well as a number of them from both
the school and public libraries), and I waited.
I don’t remember much from that first lesson. I remember
being asked if I thought the saddle or the bridle went on first (it’s the
saddle, friends), and being shown how to catch a horse in the pasture, but I
don’t remember much other than that. I don’t remember getting into the saddle
(likely because I’d been on a horse before that point thanks to some family
members, not that I remember those moments either), and I don’t really remember
subsequent lessons either.
I remember being taught what contact is, and spending a lot
of time on the lunge line without reins or stirrups (something for which Kim
deserves a million thanks—my seat is by no means perfect, but it’s
kept me safe through a number of bad moments that could’ve ended with me on the
ground if it were worse), but for the most part, things have blurred together.
I barely remember my first lesson with Mandy (I’m fairly sure it involved me
saying something about how I’d never properly cantered off the lunge line), or
exactly when in my riding career it was.
What I do remember is my first ride on that one horse, that
night where I walked into the barn and looked at the lesson board and went “Nugget?
I have no idea who Nugget is.” I remember going into the arena and asking Mandy,
only to be told that he was the palomino in the long aisle with the tack out in
front of his stall.
I remember him being a huge pain in the ass in the
cross-ties, but still thinking that he was adorable (I have always had and will
forever have a soft spot for palominos). I remember needing my dad’s help to
get the girth onto the first hole because Nug had a bit of a hay belly. I
remember how much work it was just getting him to walk and trot, let alone
canter, and I remember expressing to Mandy that I liked him.
She told me that my parents had spoken to her about
half-leasing a horse for me—probably Ricky, a massive chestnut
Thoroughbred gelding who was fun to ride, but not my favorite. The idea was news
to me, and it was exciting—I’d been begging for my own horse for years, after
all—but I didn’t want Ricky. I wanted the stubborn, chubby, out-of-shape Quarter
Horse that I was sitting on (which probably had more to do with the fact that I’d
always wanted a palomino than anything else, but I digress).
Within a couple of weeks, I had him.
It wasn’t easy with him. He was stubborn, and he reared when
he was scared, and we had a lot of work to do both on the ground and in the saddle.
I went from cantering and jumping full (small) courses to doing nothing but
walk/trot work, and when we were finally able to canter for longer than a few
strides, I was just focused on getting him to pick up the correct lead, damn
it.
He was a sixteen-hand, solid horse, and (at the start) I was
five foot two and weighed max a hundred pounds, so there was no forcing him
into anything. I would’ve lost that battle in a second. Sure, I carried a
dressage whip with me every time I rode, and there were a couple of instances
where I really did have to use it (not just the “Hey, listen to my leg” taps
that were our standard), but for the most part, it was just patience and more
patience.
It was teaching him to trust me. I spent hours with him
every week. Our on the ground time was just as, if not more, important as the
time I spent in the saddle. I hand-grazed him, groomed him, and would just sit
there talking to him on the weekends when my parents would drop me off at the
barn for five or six hours. He tried my Doritos and my pretzels and I made sure to bring him a carrot or an apple or a homemade horse cookie every time I saw him. I wasn’t just the person who came out to ride him.
I was the person who came out to be with him, and there were a lot of rides
where I didn’t ask much more of him than some easy walk/trot/canter around the
ring.
He learned to trust me, and in the process of him learning
to do that, I was inadvertently learning how to trust him.
I don’t remember many moments with him where I was genuinely
scared. Through the rears and the spooks and the refusals and the times when he
dumped me on my ass (of which there were multiple), I can only remember two
moments of genuine fear, and those were because of my brain getting the better
of me, not something that he did. For the most part, I was perfectly content to
do whatever with him, because I knew that as long as I did my job, he would do
his.
I had multiple rides where I’d flat him and then pop him
over a couple of easy fences at the end of our ride, just because. We’d go out
into the back pastures and “jump” the tiny logs which were little more than
glorified trot poles. It got to the point where we would go out and jump the
little gates and logs that we came across as we wound our way around on the
trails, just because. Jumping just was with
him. Mandy would pop the fences higher and higher in our lessons (though I
doubt I ever cleared anything over three feet, if that), and we would go, because
I knew that it was going to happen.
I lost that somewhere in the years after him. I lost that
sense of knowing, of not questioning
myself or what we were doing. I don’t know how much of it is the fact that I
wasn’t riding during the years where I was developing a real sense of risk, and
how much of it is that I don’t have that same kind of relationship with any of
the horses that I ride now, but that feeling was gone.
Flatting was fine—I started with a dressage trainer, and
I will never be uncomfortable getting into the saddle and riding (I had a
concussion so bad that I don’t remember anything, and I didn’t think twice
about getting back into the saddle again once I was cleared, so call me crazy)—but
jumping?
Jumping was a different story.
Tiny fences were—are—whatever. There’s not a lot that can go
wrong over a two foot fence, no matter how bad your distance is. It’s when we’re
getting to two-six and above that I start having issues.
Now, two feet, six inches really isn’t that high. That was
normal for me before, easy, and also something that’s difficult to screw up. I
was jumping two foot, nine inch courses at the age of thirteen, no questions asked.
At that point in my life, it was unquestioned that I’d be moving up to three
feet. I didn’t know if it would be the upcoming summer, or sooner, or later,
but I knew it was going to happen (all of this before I had my accident, of
course).
That hasn’t been the case in recent years.
Now you set a jump of a reasonable size (read: minimum
two-six) in front of me, and it’s somewhere in the range of a forty-five/forty-five/ten percent
split whether my brain will go “THERE’S A JUMP ABORT MISSION ABORT MISSION
ABORT MISSION,” “There’s a jump, are you sure about this?” or “Oh cool, there’s
a jump.”
Usually, even if it’s the first case, I can get myself
through it, but those rides aren’t pretty. Those rides are filled with
mistakes, and my equitation falling apart, and so many other things, because
while I can get myself over the fence, it’s hard to keep everything else
together at the same time. I sing Thunder
Road to myself (no matter how stressed I am, I will always know all the
words to that song) and that helps because it makes me keep breathing and relax
a little bit, but it’s never enough to completely shut my brain up.
The second case is usually a bit better. It’s not always pretty, but as long as I remember
that two plus two equals more leg and remember to keep my hands up, we go, and
we look reasonably okay doing it. I still have to sing Thunder Road sometimes, but I don’t feel like we’re going to stop
or I’m going to be taken off with or dumped on my ass at any given moment.
The third case is a rarity, like finding me somewhere on a
Friday night other than reading blogging from my bed while my cat snores
next to me, or managing to find the perfect pair of boots on the first try, but
sometimes it happens, and when it does, it’s glorious.
That case has eluded me a lot in recent years, and has also proven
to be immensely frustrating—I took seven months off in 2015, largely because of
my inability to find that place in my riding again. I’ve gotten better at
dealing with the frustration (it rarely makes me consider quitting anymore,
though I’ve thought about it after some spectacularly awful rides (from a
psychological perspective, not a physical one)), but it’s been a roadblock for
me, and I’m trying to figure out what the solutions are.
One of them, the one that’s my end goal, is to find that horse again. Not Nugget—I don’t
know where he is anymore, though I sometimes wish I did, and I have absolutely
no desire to replace him in my heart—but I want to find another horse that I
click with, where I meet it and say “This is the one” without any hesitation. I
want to find another horse that I can build that relationship with, where I can
settle into that feeling of knowing every
time I get into the saddle, but I know that’s a long way off (two years, at
minimum, and probably more like three or four).
Another is to set goals—I still don’t really have the
financial means to show at any significant level (or any level at all), and
anything outside of the schooling ring in the hunter/jumper world isn’t really
my thing (though I’ve learned that I do enjoy schooling shows), but I can find
things that I want to do. If the Dom Schramm clinic actually happens in the
spring, I can make going to that a goal (though, again, the finances will be
interesting). I can make returning to Rolling Rock for another cross-country
schooling a goal. I can set attainable goals to work towards, so that when I
have another one of those frustrating rides, I’m not going “What’s the point?”
but instead reminding myself that there’s something I’m striving for.
A third solution is to keep riding. That sounds obvious, but
it’s more complex than just getting into the saddle. Part of it is riding a ton
of different horses, to get used to the true push rides and the set-‘em-up-and-leave-‘em-alone
rides and the true speed demons so that I feel safe no matter who I’m on, but
part of it is trying to have as many rides like the lesson that I had on Monday
as I possibly can.
I’ve ridden Solly many times since he first came to the
barn, and my first ride on him was within a couple of weeks of his arrival,
back when he didn’t understand the concept of “straight” or “quiet,” when we
had to circle or halt after every fence. We’ve had good rides and bad rides
(and some downright confusing ones) in the year and three-ish months that he’s
been with us, but I don’t really remember having a ride like the one we had on
Monday.
On Monday, for the first time in a long time, I just knew. We’d had a good jumping lesson a
couple of weeks before, too, but I hadn’t felt like this. On Monday, I was able
to do that thing Mary always recommends with him and just exist. I found myself in the tack and I knew where every part of my
body was. I was able to ride in a half-seat without feeling like I was falling
all over the place. I had to think about keeping my hands up, sure, but I was
there. I was stable.
I was stable, and every time it was our turn to go, it just happened. We had a couple of sticky
spots, but for the most part, things were clean and consistent and I felt good. Yeah, the highest verticals were
only two-six, but for the first time in a while, they felt like two-six. They felt easy. They felt simple. They felt like
a question I’d been asked a million times before and had a clear answer to, not
like some massive obstacle that had been placed in front of me.
We rode some (not remotely perfect) roll-backs, and the
footing was sloppy, and those sticky distances weren’t exactly fun, but I stayed with him. I was able
to release well enough over most of the fences, and didn’t feel like my eq was falling to
pieces, and our ride was good. It was fun. It was a reminder of why it is that
I wanted to get into this gods-cursed, money-sucking, life-dominating sport in
the first place.
I’ve learned a lot of things from riding over the years, but
perhaps the greatest lesson that I will ever learn is to keep going, even when it gets tough. Nugget taught me that
sometimes things are steps sideways, not backward—you may not be going forward,
but you’re not losing ground either—and that sometimes you have to take a
chance on things because it feels like the right thing to do.
These last three and a half years since the end of junior
year, when I got back into the saddle for my first real ride since my accident,
have reminded me that bad rides do not make you a bad rider, that it can be
slow going and there will be moments where you doubt everything, yourself
included, but that everything is a learning experience. These last three and a
half years have reminded me that I get better as I get stronger, that I will
get back to where I was one day and I will go farther than that.
The last three and a half years have given me a best friend
that I adore, whom I’ve said things to that I was never able to admit to
someone I know in real life, who has laughed with me until our faces hurt and
become someone that I am so unquestionably comfortable with that we managed to
live together for an entire year without fighting once (Love you, Allie. Movie
night soon). The last three and a half years have given me a trainer who has
given me so much more support than I probably deserve, even though I know I
haven’t always been the easiest person to deal with, and I am so grateful for
that.
So as I go into the new year, it’s not with a list of
fantastic things that have happened in the last year (though there have been
many), or with a focus on the things that worry me (though there are plenty of
those, and I do think about them quite a lot, though I try to look at them
through a lens of how I can affect change). Instead I’m going into the new year with
a focus on what riding has taught me.
I am going to keep working. I am going to keep retraining my
brain back into something resembling what it used to be. I am going to keep
riding, even when I have days where I question why I’m doing it. I’m going to
make a list of goals (both short-term and long-term) to help keep me motivated.
I’m going to work outside of the barn to get myself back into shape faster than my rides can (I miss
being almost pure muscle, and it’s truly amazing how much my riding has changed
in the last year as I’ve gotten stronger). I’m going to keep laughing at my
mistakes as much as possible, and do my best to catalog my good rides so that I
can look back on them when I’m low on confidence.
I am going to get back to the point where I know every time I get in the saddle. I don’t
know if that will happen in the upcoming year, or how long it’s going to take
me, but I’m going to make it happen. I owe myself that much after all of this.
(Plus, having my own horse is becoming a tangible thing in a
way that it never has before. I graduate in under a year and a half. I’ll need
to focus on paying off the loans that I do have and saving some money in the
first year (or three), but I’m so close to being self-sufficient, and that
means I can finally do that thing I’ve been striving for since I was two. There’s
no motivator greater than that.)
As I close this post, I would just like to say a final message to 2016:
It's been real. Now, if you wouldn't mind, fuck off.
2017, allow me to preempt whatever shit you're going to throw at us over the next three hundred and sixty five days (because there's sure to be plenty of it):
Fuck you. I know you have absolutely no control over what's happening in the universe, but please try to be nice.
Until next time x
