This is somewhat of a tradition for me now, across all of my blogs, so I present to you...
twenty-one things learned by the age of twenty-one || a list:
Learning how to wait for things is a life skill. It can be the worst thing in the world when it's happening, but when you start getting close to getting something important that you want and know that it's almost within your grasp? It's the best feeling in the world, even if it brings restlessness with it too.
Making carefully curated playlists for specific moods when you have over 3400 songs on your phone takes a really, really long time.
Sometimes you're going to become uncomfortably aware of your own mortality, and that's all right. It's okay to be conscious of the fact that you aren't invincible. If anything, it can teach you to be more deliberate with your choices (or to stop worrying so much about what's coming and just let things happen. It takes all kinds of people).
There will be people in this world whose importance will not become clear immediately, but you'll figure it out eventually. It becomes really hard to ignore if you can live with them for a year and still actively seek out their company when that year is over.
Some songs are always going to remind you of specific people, but one day you'll be able to listen to them without it bringing more discomfort than it does peace. There's something oddly comforting about being able to put a song on a playlist without overthinking its significance.
Say you're sorry, even if it takes a while. Clearing the air with someone, whether it takes months or years, makes everything easier.
Don't set impossibly high standards for yourself, and if you absolutely insist on doing it anyway, don't wreck yourself trying to meet them. Sometimes you just need to finish the paper and shut off your computer and go to sleep rather than staying up all night worrying about it. As one of my professors told us this spring, "Complete is more important than perfect."
Long-distance friendships suck, but if you find someone who makes a five-hour round-trip negligible just for the pleasure of their company, they will quite possibly be the best person you know and you'll learn to deal with not seeing them every day (Social media can be a truly wonderful thing).
Let people change. Let them become something other than what they are in your mind, what they were when you knew them. Some people will come back to you and some people won't, but if you're going to expect people to let you grow, you have to do the same for them.
Learn to say no, even if you know that you're the most capable person for a particular job. There comes a point where you've got enough on your plate and picking up the slack is up to other people on your team. If they aren't willing to do it, let it go. It's not fair for them to expect you to work yourself to the point of physical illness just because they refuse to act on their responsibilities.
Conversely, if you like the people that you're working with, even the most mundane and tenuous tasks will become easier. There's something to be said for working in an office where people will spontaneously start singing songs from High School Musical on a Thursday morning just because someone asked "What time is it?"
It's okay to be afraid of things. It's okay if they're little things, and it's okay if they're big things. What matters is whether or not you allow your fear to stop you from moving forward and trying anyway.
Saying goodbye can be the worst, most impossible thing, but goodbye doesn't mean it's over. Goodbye isn't always the end. Sometimes it's just until we meet again.
You don't have to do things just because everyone else is doing them, and you don't have to justify it either. Make the choices that are right for you, and if people can't get past the fact that you aren't doing what they do, they aren't people that you need in your life.
Sometimes you just have to roll your windows down and blast your music and drive. It may not actually take you away from your problems, but that feeling of freedom can be enough to carry you through more than you might think.
If you have relentless enthusiasm for something, that's more than enough to carry you through the stages of not being terribly good at it. It takes time to be successful at things. Loving them makes the bad stuff at the beginning (and along the way) seem less terrible.
Hard work doesn't fix everything. It's not some cure-all. It doesn't guarantee you anything. What it does is arm you with the tools to change things if you're smart enough to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you, or to create those opportunities for yourself if they don't come your way.
It might seem like it's never going to happen, but one day you'll grow into yourself. It might take twenty years for it to happen, but it will, and it's going to be a beautiful thing when it does.
Old hurts come back. You can think that you're over something, that you're past it, but it will come back to haunt you every now and then. Being better isn't about never feeling those things again. It's about knowing that you'll get through it when you do.
You have to listen to yourself. You have to listen when you feel tired, when you feel weak, when something just feels wrong even though everything in life seems to be going perfectly. Gut feelings are there for a reason and you'll do yourself so many more favors if you pay attention to what your body and your mind are telling you, even if those messages aren't entirely understandable at first. You aren't any good to anyone, yourself included, if you're too tired and too overworked to get anything done.
Sometimes it's the unexpected people who stick around. Don't try to tell yourself who you will or won't be friends with after a period of your life is over, because you'll probably be wrong and there's a lot to be said for doing the adult thing and meeting up with an old friend for dinner after work. There's a lot to be said for people who knew you in the before as well as the after (and if you still like each other after you've grown out of your shared awkward years, they're definitely worth keeping around).
I got lucky as a kid because when I was in preschool, one of my teachers told my parents that they should never think of me as bossy, because I wasn't bossy. I had leadership skills, and minimizing that by calling me bossy wasn't something that anyone should ever do.
I got lucky as a kid because when I was eight, my mother stumbled across a book in Barnes and Noble and bought it for me because it had a red-headed girl and a cat and a horse on the cover. I got lucky as a kid because when I read that book a few months later, I met Alanna of Trebond. I got lucky as a kid because I met Alanna of Trebond and she introduced me to Veralidaine Sarrasri and Keladry of Mindelan and I learned that the world couldn't stop me from the things I put my mind to just because I was a girl.
I got lucky as a kid because I met Sabriel and Lirael and Lyssa and Menolly and learned that the world should never underestimate the power of a teenage girl. I got lucky as a kid because I watched Eowyn over and over again, because I didn't know what it meant at the time but I learned that "I am no man" is a battle cry, not something to be ashamed of.
I got lucky as a kid because I had my female heroes, because even as I read books and watched movies with boys at their helm, I had Alanna and Daine and Kel there to remind me that I didn't have to be a boy to do great things. I had Sabriel and Lirael to remind me that teenage girls can face incredible evils and win against them. I had Eowyn to remind me that being a woman doesn't make me weak—it makes me dangerous.
I grew up with high expectations, most of which I've set for myself. That which I deem just "good enough" is many people's version of "better than expected." It gets me into a spot of trouble every now and then—it's hard to remain relaxed about what's going on in your life when your version of acceptable is bordering on unnecessary—but it's served me well so far, and it's never been based on being better than those around me.
It's never been based on proving I was good enough to anyone else. To be perfectly honest, the only thing I've really had trouble with is proving that I'm good enough to myself.
I went to training for work in Cleveland this past week, and spent the weekend and the first half of the week being unable to take a deep breath. My anxiety is such that I suffer from a very real case of impostor syndrome, which manifests itself through my breathing most of the time even if I feel like it isn't bothering me. My expectations for myself are so high that I frequently feel like I'll never be able to match them, and that makes me forget that I don't have to meet those expectations in order for other people to be perfectly satisfied by what I'm doing.
I've gotten into plenty of stressful situations because of this tendency, but there are things that I do when it puts in an appearance (typically around midterms or finals, or other big life events like my internship). As I've mentioned before, I watch The Lord of the Rings, but I also reach for some books on my bookshelf, books that have been taped back together because of how tattered they are, books that contain notes from their authors on the title pages to remind me that yes, girls do rule, and yes, I can do this.
I met Tamora Pierce at the library in September of 2012, almost five years ago, now. I was sixteen years old and I went to hear her speak and we were told that we could bring up to four books for her to sign afterward, so I did. I couldn't bring some of my favorites, though, because one of them literally has duct tape covering the spine to hold the book together after I split it in two from reading it so much, and another's cover is Scotch-taped from where I accidentally ripped it during one of the many times that I was carrying it around in my bag.
I confessed that to her when I met her, that I hadn't brought the books that I really wanted to bring, and I won't forget what she told me—she loves seeing books that are like that, because that's how she knows that their readers really, truly love them. That's how she knows that they mean something.
I've all but destroyed those books because they've always been there to remind me that I can get through anything, that I should never be discouraged just because I'm a girl, that I may have to fight harder or work longer or have a hundred times more belief in myself, but no one can stop me from doing things just because I'm not a man.
Today I saw Wonder Woman, and while I cried at the end for story-related reasons (no spoilers!!), there were several moments during the movie where I either did cry or almost cried simply because of what I was watching. I cried when I saw Robin Wright on screen as a badass general and not the princess of my childhood, because I adore The Princess Bride but it meant so much more to see a leader and a fighter instead of a tied-up blonde.
I cried multiple times watching Diana fight, and even just when I was watching her make decisions and refuse to take no for an answer, because I had my female heroes as a kid, but not like that. Not on such a large scale. Not headlining their own blockbuster Hollywood movie. There are a lot of people in the world who love Tamora Pierce's books, and plenty who love Sabriel and Lirael and the Old Kingdom series, but those things have never been on a scale like this (much as I wish they were).
I was crying because I didn't get to see my heroes like that, but there are eight-year-old girls now who will. There are little girls who have walked and are going to walk into that movie theater and come out having watched a movie with the female protagonist that they deserve, one who isn't the butt of jokes or made out to be some jerk's fantasy, but instead one who kicks ass and takes charge and stands on her own without having to let go of being in love and being a person in the process.
There are little girls who get to see their hero on an international stage, and the movie industry can no longer pretend to nobody wants to watch movies with female heroes. The movie industry can no longer pretend that it's enough to push us to the background, to make us side characters, to not give us full narratives because "it won't sell."
Well, guess what?
We just got a movie with a female lead and a female director. We just got a movie that has made over $400 million dollars worldwide (and counting), a movie certified 93% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie that was humor and inspiration and sadness and brilliance all rolled into one, a movie that girls will be watching over and over again in the way that I've reread my books and repeatedly watched Eowyn slay the Witch King of Angmar, because it's a reminder that girls really are unstoppable.
Wonder Woman was the hero we needed, but more than that, she was hands down, 100%, absolutely, truly the hero that so many girls have deserved.
It doesn't feel like it's been all that long since I graduated from high school, but on June 6th, it will have been three years. On June 6th, I'll be in an office in Cleveland going through my second day of training for my internship. On June 6th, I will be even closer to finishing my final year of college. I'll be less than a year away from sitting for at least one section of the CPA exam. I'm a lot closer to being a real adult now than I am to being a child.
Being less than a year away from my college graduation feels weird. It's not weird because it's the end of my education—I really do want to pursue a PhD in anthropology in the future (for my own amusement if nothing else) so things are really only just beginning—but it's weird to look back on it. It's weird to look back on everything that has happened and how much things have changed. I've been doing a lot of reflecting recently, I suppose, and that's brought a lot with it.
I've had some truly excellent professors in college (mostly in the anthropology department). My professor for my first-ever anthro class is an old friend of my parents, and it's because of him (and my T.A.) that I kept taking classes in the field and eventually made the decision to switch my A&S major from fiction writing to anthro. I had that T.A. for a summer class, which was equal parts hilarious and intellectually stimulating, because, for some reason, I keep winding up in anthro classes that culminate in a collection of really weird inside jokes, and you can learn a lot (of both awesome and really, really weird stuff) from someone who was a coroner before they started graduate school (I'm still very sad that he finished his PhD and went elsewhere for his post-doc because the department just isn't the same).
My intro to physical anthropology professor is a generally chill person and I had him for a different seminar class in the fall which pretty much consisted of us having round-table discussions in the physical lab once a week until we ran out of things to talk about. My thesis advisor is someone that I've had for two seminars over the last year, and she is hands-down one of the single greatest people I've met in college—she's a fantastic teacher, her classes are structured really well (at least for me), she actively encourages people to pursue topics they're interested in for their assignments (and puts up with me showing up to her office hours all the time to ask questions about said topics), and she also brought snacks to almost every single one of our classes this spring, which I'd like to think speaks for itself.
As wonderful as they all are, though—as sad as I am that my time with them is coming to an end (though who's to say, because I don't know where I'll wind up for graduate school)—it's not really them that I'm reflecting on. They've done a lot for me, but it's my high school teachers that I keep going back to, which probably isn't surprising given that my high school OChem teacher told me that I seem to be one of the only people who has been genuinely reflective on my time there since I've graduated.
It's hard to not be, honestly. My academic career has been a rocky one on a lot of fronts (though not the academics themselves, fortunately) and even as high school was difficult for me in many ways, it was also the first place where I really had moments of feeling safe. It was the first place where I knew that there was someone I could go to, where I knew that I had someone I could trust to be there when things weren't going so well, where I learned how to ask for help without needing parental backing in the process.
It didn't really feel that way at the time, and that's probably why I'm still so stuck on it—I'm not stuck on it because I want to go back (as I've discussed before), but I'm stuck on it because I have distance now. I can look back on what it was and understand what it did and be genuinely appreciative of how much it taught me and how far I've come since then. When I think about high school, I don't really think about social things. I don't think about dances, or hanging out with friends (with a few notable exceptions—I don't think I'll ever forget that lost day from sophomore year).
Instead, I think about that song from Charlie Brown and the bench down the hall from the history office and the "Swarts! How's it going?" that I got pretty much every day the last two years of high school (and still get, when I go back). I think about utterly terrible chemistry jokes and how almost every meeting that I had with some people somehow wound up taking up an entire free period or hour after school. I think about the emails that I got because something reminded a teacher of me and they wanted to pass it on, that philosophy class that I sat in on senior year just because I stopped by to say hi and wound up staying the entire time, my entrance interview and the subsequent discussions about the awesomeness that is anything written by Tamora Pierce.
I was a mess in high school. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I was a mess. I was borderline losing it most of the time. Junior year was a hell that I medicated my way through with caffeine and ibuprofen because I was only getting four or five hours of sleep a night during the week and then crashing on Friday as soon as I got home and sleeping until Saturday morning. Hell Week during musical literally was hell week for me half the time. My emotional control was tenuous at best and sleep deprivation didn't make it any better.
What made it better was being able to walk into the history office during a free period with the knowledge that even if we couldn't talk that day, Mr. Weiss would find some time that week (usually a full free period) to sit down with me on that bench down the hall and help me through whatever was dragging me down at that particular time (or talk me down from the cliff that I was in danger of jumping off of, even if neither of us realized it at the time).
What made it better was that day after school junior year when Mr. Smith sat down with me and let me say whatever it was that I said (even though it ended in me crying) and told me things that he really didn't have to so that I would know that he got it. What made it better was knowing that he was going to push me to produce the best work that I could, but that if I needed to, I could go up to him after class and say "I haven't been sleeping and I can't think straight and can I please have a couple of extra days on that paper so that it's not completely awful" and get an extension without having to justify it further than that.
What made it better was telling stupid terrible chemistry jokes to Landreth in class pretty much every day for the second half of junior year, and having discussions about books with Ms. Williams (they weren't always about Tamora Pierce, but you really can't go wrong with her), and Mr. Miller's belief in my insanity due to how much I wrote. What made it better were those advising meetings with Dr. Ashworth that always began with me intending to say "Everything's good" but wound up turning into discussions of faith and religion or something interesting in the news, and his (and Dr. Sutula's) unrelenting belief in how intelligent I was even when I didn't believe it myself.
What made it better was Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers on random mornings in history, skiing videos and Christmas carols in OChem, flight simulators or weekly news quizzes or a map of the U.K. in calculus so that Dr. Ashworth could get us to try pronouncing various place names and laugh at our inability to say anything correctly (I will never mispronounce Worchestershire or Leicester or Edinburgh ever again), that one day in Advanced Bio where everyone fell silent just in time for all of us to hear Ms. Zheng say "So I don't know how to make meth, but—", and the little notebook that I kept in my backpack which contains a further selection of stupid quotes from classes because I couldn't pass up the opportunity to write that stuff down.
(A favorite exchange of mine is the following from our alcohols unit in OChem: "Ethanol can be used for several purposes, such as..." "Getting drunk!" "Drinking to excess twice or three times a month is worse for you than having one or two drinks every night, but that ruins the effect of alcohol, doesn't it?" "That's what ecstasy is for!")
I learned a lot of academic things from all of these people in high school. I learned how to ask good questions, how to take notes, how to cite things in Chicago style (the merits of which I had an in-depth discussion about with my best friend last week because we are literally that weird and that into writing research papers), how to structure an argument and write a decent essay (in a short span of time, no less, because my procrastination skills are legendary). I learned how to research in a library and how to draw chemical structures and how to work my way through mathematics concepts that I don't understand.
I learned all of that, and it matters because it set me up for success in college, but really... The most important thing that I learned was how to look after myself. I learned how to ask for help. I learned what it means to really have people in your corner who want you to succeed for no reason other than because they want it for you. I learned what it means to feel accepted for who and what I am, no matter how much of a mess I can be sometimes. I learned what it means to have people believe in me (people who aren't my family and contractually obligated to do so), and I learned how to internalize that knowledge so that it would be there even when the people aren't.
I learned that no matter how far you go, no matter how much you change, no matter how well you do, no matter how much you've done for yourself since, you will still cry when one of those people tells you how proud they are of you, and you will definitely cry if more than one of them tells you that (I have no shame).
So as I look at the internship that will hopefully lead to my first full-time job, at my twenty-first birthday, at my impending graduation and whatever lies after it, I just have to say this:
To Mr. Weiss, Mr. Smith, Dr. Ashworth, Dr. Sutula, Landreth, Ms. Williams, and everyone else from high school who gave me a push in the right direction even if they weren't aware of it... Thank you. Thank you a million times, and even more than that.
I know that not everyone says it, that not everyone comes back, that it can be an afterthought, but it isn't for me. It never will be, because I don't know where I would be right now without all of the help that you gave me. Either way, this is something that I have to and will continue to say, because I know how lucky I've been and there aren't enough thanks in the world to cover it.
I should've been asleep two hours ago. Oh well. My sleep-deprivation is self-inflicted and its current cause is much preferable to what was there in high school.
I'd say that anyone who knows me knows that Howard Shore is my favorite composer, but that's not true. That isn't something that I discuss regularly. It comes up in the context of midterms and finals, of periods of my life where I have a lot to do and not enough time to get it done, because I've felt for a long time that accomplishing difficult tasks is a lot easier when your soundtrack makes you feel like you're storming the gates of Mordor.
My love of the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings films—my incessant need to have all of the Complete Recordings in my possession—comes from more than one place. It's not purely about the music, and it's not purely about the movies. It's about something in the middle of those things, about my appreciation for exactly what Howard Shore managed to create in his compositions combined with what those soundtracks mean to me in the broader context of Middle Earth, about this thing that takes me back to something else.
What's much less of a secret than my love of Howard Shore is my love of The Princess Bride. I've seen that movie so many times that I know it by heart and can recite most of the lines along with the characters. If you ask me what my favorite movie is, The Princess Bride will probably be my answer. I saw it for the first time when I was about five years old, my father bought me the DVD for my eighth birthday, and the rest is history.
I don't know if it's entirely honest to say that it's really my favorite movie, though. It's a wonderful film and it never fails to make me happy, but at the end of the day—at the end of every stressful period in my life, mixed in there once or twice or six times a year—I wind up watching The Lord of the Rings (the extended editions, no less, because once you've seen them it's impossible to go back to the theatrical versions without feeling like you're missing something).
I'm not always good at restraining myself from watching those films. Sometimes I wind up doing it when I should be doing other things (oops), but this time I did manage to keep myself from doing that. I've been pretty sick for the last week with what was the worst cold I've had in a long time, and I spent a good bit of it laid up in bed. Obviously, I had to find something to do with myself, and after the mess that was this past semester, there was an easy answer to my problem: The Lord of the Rings.
I don't remember when I saw the first two movies, but I'm pretty sure it was actually after we saw The Return of the King. We saw it in theaters, and I don't actually remember all that much of it other than how terrified I was of Shelob (I'm terrified of spiders) because I was only seven at the time, but somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the movies. It's not surprising, because I have a deep love for good fantasy, and Tolkien sort of founded modern fantasy, so it's really quite logical, but the fact remains: The Lord of the Rings have become my comfort movies.
In April of my senior year of high school—three years ago, now, which is an utterly terrifying thought—I gave a speech at assembly. Giving a Senior Sage was an opportunity that was awarded to all the seniors, should they choose to pursue it, and I felt like I had to. I felt like there was something that I needed to say (and there still is, hence the blog), and I didn't know what that something was, but I knew it was present. I started writing my senior sage in August, before I'd even officially started classes that year, but that wasn't the speech I gave. I wrote thirty drafts before I was happy, before I'd settled on what felt right, but that final draft didn't include everything.
No, that final draft left out a lot of things, including this: "There's this thing about instrumental music that just calls to you, this feeling that you get when you're listening to the soundtrack of Return of the King at night on a Thursday, this strange emotion that just slips into your heart and gives you chills and leaves you breathless and sometimes on the verge of tears, because when you listen to this music you feel like you're capable of doing anything. You sit there and stare at nothing and remember what it felt like to watch those movies when you were five and six and seven and think about how nobody really believed in Eowyn, but I am no man and you can slay a dragon (or a Nazgûl) if you believe in it enough. You can survive this if you believe in something, anything."
I wrote that on December 26th, 2013, because I'd asked for the Complete Recordings for Christmas and my mother gifted me the soundtrack of The Return of the King. It's something that I've listened to countless times since then, something that I've put on when I was stressed out or upset, or even just as the soundtrack for a nap (or several). I think I sort of knew that I was never going to wind up sharing that specific draft in its entirety—it was one of those things that I'd written just because I needed to write it, not because I wanted someone else to read it—but that doesn't make it any less true.
So why, then? Why did I reach for these movies this past week? I'm not at the same mental point as I was then, almost three and a half years ago, so what is it about my life right now that made me feel the need to watch all of them in their entirety, and then follow them up with the appendices as well? Why did I do that, knowing that Return of the King makes me cry every single time? Why?
This semester was not an easy one. Between the amount of work that I had to do, for both my honor society and my classes, and my other commitments, and the things that happened which completely blindsided me emotionally, I've spent most of the last four months with constant stress. It wasn't massive amounts of stress—at least, not most of the time—but I actually cope better with short-term, high-pressure environments than I do with long-term, low- to medium-pressure environments. I find it much easier to push through things when I know they'll be over soon.
As a result, I've been feeling very, very drained. It wasn't like it was in high school, where I was falling apart emotionally left and right, but I've just been tired. I've been tired all the time, no matter how much sleep I've gotten, and even the last few days haven't been enough to get that back on track (which probably has something to do with how sick I've been, since my body is pretty exhausted right now). The time off before my internship starts is primarily going to be a period for me to get back to a place where I'm not constantly exhausted even when I'm getting eight hours of sleep in a night.
To top it off, I'm feeling restless. Part of it's about riding, as I wrote about in my last post, and there's not much I can do about that other than hold on to my dream and wait it out, but the other part of it is about the fact that my junior year of college is over and I don't really know how I got here or how it went so fast. I don't know how it's been three years since I stood up on that stage my senior year of high school and gave that speech, how I went from that to facing down my last year of school before I have to go be a real adult. I don't know when I grew up.
I'm scared, but I'm also ready. I'm ready to move on and do something with myself. I've been older than my years for a long time—trauma will do that to you—but it's manifesting itself again in something other than the age of most of my friends. It's manifesting itself in this need to go forward, in this need to be better, in this need to try to make a change in my own small way, no matter how scared I am of the process.
I keep this whiteboard propped up underneath the hutch of my desk where I can see it when I'm working on things, and usually it's got a song lyric or some quote that I saw on Tumblr that I really liked on it, but right now it's got something else—"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." It's a reminder for me, something that I need to see on a daily basis, something to remind me that even when we're thrust into situations that we don't want to be a part of—situations like the current state of the world—we aren't stuck. We can't control those things specifically, but we can control ourselves. We can control the choices we make. We can control what we make of our lives.
Three years ago, I stood up on that stage, and I made a choice. I made a choice to get up in front of my classmates, in front of all of these people who probably wouldn't remember most or any of what I said, and admit that I have PTSD. I made a choice to stop hiding it from everyone, to stand up there and own up to it and acknowledge that it had changed me. It was about me, not everyone else. It was about me owning who I was, even if I wasn't always especially thrilled with her. It was about saying "I know I can be prickly, I know I can be standoffish, I know I've been cynical and all of these other things, but I'm still here. I'm still going forward. I'm not by myself. I still have things that matter."
I'm so far past who I was then. I'm so far past being afraid of myself. I'm so far past not being satisfied with who I am as a person. There are always things I'm working on, and I'm always going to do things that I'm not completely happy with, but I'm no longer trying to remind myself daily that "even darkness must pass"—at least, I'm not trying to remind myself of that on a personal level. In the context of the wider world, sure, but not for me. I slayed my own Witch King of Angmar, but I didn't do it by myself. I had my Merry there, stabbing him in the back to help me along.
A lot of people stepped into those shoes and filled that role, but at this point in my life, as I look at my (small) circle of friends, at the people I talk to on a regular basis and feel comfortable with, there's really only one who's been there for it all. I usually call her my best friend when I'm talking to other people, but that's not the right label for her. She and I talked about that this past week, about the fact that we've been through so much together that we're past the point of "best friend" being an adequate description for our relationship to one another. The label we seem to have settled on is each other's "person."
I can't give you a description for what that means, exactly, because we don't really have a definition for it. It's more about the fact that we've known each other since we were in middle school, thanks to our forays into online horse forums, about how we reconnected in high school and became close along the way, about how we met each other in person for the first time last year and have seen each other several times since and can talk until we lose our voices without ever running out of things to say, about the fact that no matter what's happening, no matter how bad things are, we've always got each other.
We've always got someone in our corner. We always know that it might take a second and it might take a day, but there will always be a response to that message. There will always been a sympathetic ear. There will always be honest advice, and there will never be useless platitudes expressed in difficult situations. We tell each other what the other person needs to hear, and sometimes that means acknowledging that the pain and the heartbreak and the sadness and the anger don't just magically go away, that you might have to live with them for a while.
You might have to live with them, but you won't be doing it alone, and I'm not. I haven't.
We aren't separated by more than about a year in age, but there's a couple of years between us at school. I'll be walking out into adulthood when she's just reaching the halfway point of college, but that doesn't mean that we aren't going to be there for one another. To quote Samwise Gamgee, "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you." We can't go through life for each other, but we can pick one another up when it gets a little too hard. There's always someone there willing to do the heavy lifting for a while when we can't quite manage it on our own.
That's what The Lord of the Rings is to me, I guess. That's why I settled on it all those years ago, why it's the thing that I choose to lose myself in more than anything else when I need an escape from everything in my life. It's my reminder that no matter how dark things seem, we can always fight to make them brighter. It's my reminder that no matter how alone we may feel, there's always someone there to help carry us along for a while.
It's my reminder of where I was, of where I've come from, of where I'm going, because I've been reaching for those movies and those soundtracks for so long that they've intertwined themselves into so many different aspects of my life. They're part of those periods of stress, of the relief when they're over, of the days that I spent shut up in my friend's home theater watching the films the summer after senior year because she'd never seen them and myself and two of our friends felt that we had to rectify that situation immediately (complete with a handy "who's who" guide made by yours truly), and they're tied up in all of the emotions associated with those things, even as those moments are long gone.
Really, The Lord of the Rings is my reminder that sometimes we say goodbye, but that doesn't mean that it's the end. That doesn't mean that it's over. There's always room for another story, even if it's not ours to tell.
My story isn't over, but it's separating. I'm getting ready to get on that ship and leave, and I don't know where I'm going to wind up. I don't know what will happen to me in the end, what I'll do, who I'll be, but we're getting there. Things are changing. Nothing is ever going to be the same.
Well, nothing except for my incessant love of the motifs associated with Rohan and Edoras. I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon. It's Howard Shore, after all. He is my favorite composer for a reason.
I'm not surprised, really. I've been restless on and off for the last seven and a half years. It's been better lately, but the feeling is never really gone. I never really lose it. The restlessness is always there, no matter how settled or good I feel.
I know what brought it back this time. This isn't my first time watching Rolex—it isn't even close to being the most invested that I've been in the competition either—but that doesn't make it any less of an experience. I've seen it four times, really—once when I went in 2010, and on the USEF Network live stream for the last three years. It's the event for me, the thing that glues me to the television or my computer for four days in the way that some people watch the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup. I enjoy watching the other things that are live-streamed over the course of the year—the 5* Grand Prixs are always fun to watch, and whatever other events, but Rolex is it.
In 2010, it was more about just being there. I didn't know the event that well—I just knew it was Rolex. I didn't know the riders well at all, because it was pre-my social media days, which have let me learn about and follow all of these riders and develop an immense respect for their skills and their horsemanship. All that mattered was that I was there. All that mattered was that I was standing on that cross-country course, watching the rounds, watching these people and these horses sail over fences that were wider than I was tall like they were nothing.
Rolex 2015, I was glued to my computer even as I was studying for finals because Mandy was there, because she'd made it with that horse that I watched her train and I hadn't seen her in a while but I knew what that meant. I knew what finishing meant. I knew how far Cody had come because I was there for a lot of the early days and to see that horse—the one whose mane I pulled one day, the one I watched her school in the arena on those days when I would stay at the barn for hours—make it to the highest level of competition in the United States? That was everything. I cried watching her dressage test because they were there and part of me was too.
The last couple years I've watched just because, because eventing is everything to me, because I've been out of touch with it for longer than I would like and watching Rolex reminds me of how much it means to me. I've watched because of the respect that I have for these riders, for the spiritual experience that it is to watch Michael Jung ride around a 4* like it's something that he just wakes up and does every morning after he has his coffee (does Michael Jung even drink coffee? I don't know), for the poetry in motion that is a horse at this level.
When I was a kid I used to dream about riding at Rolex. It was what I wanted. It was that thing out there, that far-off dream, the light at the end of the tunnel, that my middle school self was convinced I would get to one day. Now, it's not that way so much anymore. It's not that I don't think I could ever ride at Rolex—there are people who do their first 4* at fifty, so it's not like I don't have time—but it's that I don't know if I want to anymore. I don't know if I want to ride a 4* cross-country course. I don't know if I want that kind of pressure.
That doesn't mean that I don't want eventing, though.
I've been a lot more settled for the last six months or so, ever since I started to finally feel like I was getting my muscle back and able to once again do those things that I could remember but didn't have the strength for, ever since I started feeling stable in the saddle again and connected to the horse I've been riding, but it's not real. It's not permanent. It gets knocked out of place more easily than I'd like, and no matter how much I try to remind myself that things are so much better than they were, that restlessness is still there at the end of the night.
That restlessness is there because no matter how much better things are than they were a few years ago, no matter how much I finally feel on again, no matter how good things are for a few days or weeks or months, there's still this thing hanging out there, this discipline that I want and love and need because there is nowhere that I feel more at home than out on a cross-country course. My appreciation for the work I do in the sandbox comes from that same place, as does my love for horses who have "the look of the eagles" (as Denny Emerson would say).
In December 2014, I made this post on Twitter:
That's not a goal that has gone away. If anything, it's intensified, because no matter how much I connect with a horse, no matter how much I like it, no matter how well we work together, I'm not going to get that sense of permanence until I don't have to worry about a horse being pulled out from under me. I should be used to it by now, because that's life when all you can afford to do is lesson, but no matter how many times it happens, it's still horrible. It's still something that I want to avoid. It's still something that I can't guarantee won't happen—yet.
I finished my junior year of college on Tuesday. Grades aren't out yet, but I know I haven't failed this semester (by most people's standards, anyway), so I'm on my way to my last year of school. I've got an internship this summer in a good place, and assuming I don't do anything incredibly stupid, I'll probably have a job there after I graduate. I don't want to buy a horse until I have most (or all) of my loans paid off, but it's there. It's not that far-off thing that it used to be. I've got a year of school left, and I'll have to do a bit of saving before I'll have the money to make a purchase, but two years from now I could very well be sitting on that horse I tweeted about almost two and a half years ago.
I'm not planning to buy a made horse. I'm not planning to buy a packer. I'm planning to buy an OTTB who will probably need plenty of time and patience before I'll even be able to think about going anywhere near a cross-country course again, but that's okay. That's fine. That's honestly something that I want, because taking that time was how I found my last partner and built my relationship with him. That's how I build trust. That's how I learn to not be afraid of what's in front of me. That's how I know that we're going to do it together, and I look forward to it.
I look forward to it because while my dreams have changed, while I don't think I'll ever be riding at Rolex (though I won't say never), while my biggest horse dream at the moment is having the land and the facilities to keep my horses in my backyard, I know that one of these days, I'm going to go back to that discipline that made me. Going back to eventing has never been a question of if—it's always been a question of when, and it's so close I can almost touch it again. That restlessness that I'm feeling isn't about feeling lost now—it's about knowing how close I am and how little distance I have left to go.
So sure, I probably won't ever ride a 4*. I don't know if I'll even be making it to a 1*. What I do know is that whatever level I'm at when I make it out at an event again, whether it's beginner novice or novice or whatever else, wherever it is, that first completion is going to be my Rolex. It was the first time that I finished that cross-country course with the knowledge that we'd made it through the whole way even after people told me that we would be eliminated, and I've been waiting for it for so long that I don't know how it could be anything else.
(I just watched Maxime Livio fuck up his first trot diagonal and somehow still wind up in first place by more than a full penalty point because the rest of his test was so good and just??? What are they feeding these Europeans??? We haven't even hit Michael Jung yet and we're already getting sub-45 scores??? I may or may not have screamed and punched my couch because these people should not be possible.)
I'm not going to say that things are back to normal because, as much as I'd like to, they aren't. There's still an empty stall in the barn, still things hanging up in the tack room, still those moments where it feels like I'm going to walk down the aisle and everything is going to be the way it was a month ago, and I know the only thing that will change that is time, and that's okay.
I've been doing a lot of thinking recently (I know that's shocking coming from me) about why I've done all of this, about why I keep coming back every time I step away, whether the distance was my choice or due to something that I have no control over, about why horses and riding are something that are just a part of me no matter what I do, and I don't really know if I have an answer.
I had last weekend off from the barn because we had the regional meeting for my honor society on Friday and Saturday, and my trainer and best friend were at a show anyway, and this past week wasn't great. I've been sleep-deprived and school has been crushing me, but this past week was just a whole different type of weird. Things just felt off all week (and were exacerbated by a bad test grade, which I will survive because 150 credits leaves a bit of wiggle room on the grades thing) and I couldn't really figure out why until this weekend.
I'm bad enough at getting my work done when I'm at normal levels of stressed out. I have to sit down and make a to-do list and work very strategically so that I can get my work to a manageable level, and it takes a lot of willpower for me to do that. It gets worse when I'm so stressed out that I don't want to (or can't) do the things that I normally do. If I can't ride, play music, write, draw, whatever, whether it's because I don't have the time or I just can't find the inspiration in myself to do them, then I get worse. The stress becomes even more of a challenge because I don't feel like myself without those things. In middle school I was always the piano player and the weird horse girl, and while a lot of things have changed since then, those two pieces are very important parts of who I am.
I went out to the barn last night for my lesson because we had our end-of-year honor society brunch this morning, which wrecked the usual Saturday morning lesson thing, and I was half an hour early for when I needed to tack up, so I spent some time saying hi to Mina, who was very affectionate (unsurprising because she is a) on stall rest right now and b) I hadn't seen her in two weeks). A little while later, I told my trainer that I'd be able to attend the schooling show the first weekend in June, which will be my first off-property show in eight years (almost exactly. Rolling Rock was June 7th, and this show is June 3rd).
Now, I'm not normally one for showing unless there's a cross-country course involved, but I'm starting to get Mina. I'm starting to figure out her buttons and when to help her or leave her alone, and we've come to a sort of peace on the ground in which I'm as gentle as possible while I'm grooming and tacking her up, and in exchange, she neither bites nor kicks me (even if she threatens to). I'm comfortable with her, and while we still have plenty to work on, she's doing a lot for my confidence and I'd like to join in on the show fun in the saddle for once instead of running around on the ground helping everyone else out.
My statement that I could go to the show was met with enthusiasm and we agreed that I could take Mina to it, and that was that, so off I went to tack up.
Flash and I had dressage boot camp yesterday. There was a lot of focus on proper collection, which required that I have control over every muscle in my body as much as I have control over my horse's. It required that I remember all those things that I learned a really long time ago, like how to sit and how to engage my core without getting stiff, and it required finding that balance between just enough contact to gather the energy encouraged by my legs and so much contact that we stopped anytime I touched his mouth (or so little that I had no contact as soon as he collected).
I was sore by the end of my ride. I was sore today. I helped hay and sweep last night after my lesson and wound up with my entire body being itchy even though everything was covered except for my hands because I am just that allergic to grass. I have helped water in single digit temperatures and trekked out through six inches of mud to catch horses and run all over the barn closing stall doors at feeding time. I've fallen off and pulled muscles and gotten concussed and been terrified and elated and I still keep going back.
I've been doing this for so long that I don't know how to separate myself from it. Sure, it's taken a spot on the back burner here and there, but I've been riding since I was eight years old. I've loved horses since a long time before that. The prospect of owning a horse has been one of those things that's been there motivating me for most of my life. For me, the idea of not riding, of not having horses in my life, is... I can't even think of a good metaphor for it.
I make a lot of mistakes, and I mean a lot. I have days where I just can't quite seem to figure out how to cue that dressage movement correctly, or where I miss distance after distance because my eye just isn't there (or my eye is there, but my nerves are getting in the way). I have days where I can't get out of my own head and everything just feels wrong. I have days where my ride doesn't really make me feel better, even when I want it to, and I know that there are people out there who judge me on nothing but those mistakes, rather than on all of the good things I've done.
That's not the important thing, though.
The important thing is that I keep going back. I keep picking up and trying again even when it's hard. Sometimes that's in the same ride, sometimes it's three rides later, and sometimes I need months off to feel comfortable enough to come back and try again, but I do it. With riding, there has never been a question of "Will I or won't I?" The question is "When will I?" Since the beginning, stopping has never been a question. Quitting has never been in the picture. Every time I've taken a break it was with the understanding that it was a break, not the end, because I'm never done.
After what happened a few weeks ago, I found myself repeating something that I used to say to myself back in high school, back when things were bad and I missed my horse and I didn't know what to do—the best way to honor the memory of what's been lost is to keep working, to keep trying, to keep getting better and pushing for more and taking all of those lessons that I've learned from those horses that aren't around anymore and applying them to the ones that are. The best way to honor my past is to keep moving forward.
That hasn't always been easy. My riding career hasn't been a smooth one. There have been a lot of dreams that I've had which have gone through revision because I either don't want them anymore or they just aren't realistic. There have been a lot of bumps in the road and a lot of times where I was so discombobulated that stopping seemed like the solution, but it was never permanent. It never stuck.
It never stuck because while I've been playing piano for longer that I've been riding, it's riding that has taught me how to stand back up. It's riding that has taught me that when you fall, you get up and you dust off your breeches and you might swear a little bit (or a lot) and it might take a little while (or a long time), but you get back in that saddle and you try again. Sometimes you have to take a few steps back and work your way up to where you were, but you do it and it'll happen if you just keep trying.
I'm not a perfect rider. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a perfect rider. I screw up on a regular basis. I'm not going to deny that. It doesn't make me any less, though, because I don't ignore my screw-ups. I fix them. Sometimes it takes me two minutes and sometimes it takes me two months (or two years), but I fix them. I have been fortunate enough to have a lot of horses in my life who have been willing to take it when I mess up, and enough who will let their displeasure be known, to figure it out along the way.
I have been fortunate enough to have a series of trainers who have been patient with me and let me set my own goals and move at my own pace, who have dealt with my anxiety and my mistakes and helped me to figure out how to handle those things so that at the end of the day, this is more fun than anything else. I have been fortunate enough to find a best friend that I can communicate with through facial expressions and bond with over our mutual nostalgia for *NSYNC and other various 90s kid favorite artists (and also our incessant need for sugar), who supports my ridiculousness and encourages my horse-related interests (however different from hers they are) and makes me laugh (and also enables me, but we don't need to talk about that).
Picking up and carrying on isn't easy. It's never easy. It wasn't easy the first time, and it's not easy now, but if there was anything in this world that was going to teach me how to keep going after my first big fall (and all of the ones that have come after it), it's riding. Horses are a part of me, and even though it hurts like hell sometimes, I wouldn't change that. My trajectory in this sport has not been linear, but the best-fit line would show it going up. I'm stronger for riding, both physically and mentally, and for all the mistakes and tears and pain, I know I'm better than I was a week or a month or a year ago. My trainer knows I'm better. That's all that matters.
There's this quote that says "Horses give us the wings we lack," and it's not wrong. Riding taught me how to fly, and I would never give up my mistakes because they're worth every perfect distance and flawless jump. Those things are rare and they're what I'm always striving for, and every time they happen, I know that the horses from my past are with me, because I wouldn't be able to do this without them.
So yeah, things aren't back to normal, but they also aren't over either, and that's good enough for me.
I've learned a lot about how to cope with grief over the years.
I've learned because I had to, because losing my boy changed everything for me and the only way that I could even think about continuing on was by learning to compartmentalize, to pack everything away and take it out again piece by piece until I'd reexamined all of it, and that reexamination took me about seven years of my life. It took me seven years of my life to figure out what my new "normal" was, to feel stable and content, to make peace with the things that I couldn't change.
Last night reopened wounds that I'd thought had healed. Last night broke something, and I don't know how long it's going to take me to piece everything back together again. It was just a normal Friday until it wasn't anymore, and I was so out of it last night that I had to take my anti-anxiety meds so that the sedative could put me to sleep.
(For reference, in the span of the last year, I have taken those pills a total of five times. They are an as-needed, an only-if-it's-really-bad, a use-this-if-your-usual-coping-methods-don't-work. I only take them when the stress and anxiety have reached levels that I can't control, and it's rare for that to happen. I've built up a pretty high tolerance.)
My riding experience has been pretty rocky since I started up again almost four years ago. I've taken multiple breaks for multiple reasons, but the one that I started in February of 2015 happened because riding just wasn't fun anymore. I felt sick to my stomach when I thought about going to the barn, I cried over it, and riding honestly stressed me out more than not riding did, so I stopped.
I stopped, and I took just over half a year off, and at the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I got back on again, just in time for this little chestnut gelding to arrive at the barn. The first time I saw him, it was after my lesson when I went wandering out into the paddock that he was in to say hello. He was more interested in the grass than he was in me, but he was sweet and adorable and my first ride on him not long after that was enough to make me fall in love.
It wasn't an easy ride. How do I know this? Well, I remember it, but I also posted this on my horse blog the following day: "Yesterday was a mess. I was tense, Solly was heavy, we’re both weak, and our first canter to the left was strung out and fast. We had trouble getting the correct distances to the fences and we were all over the place and I literally took out a standard with my foot because we were so crooked into one of the fences."
That didn't really matter, though. I could feel that he was going to be something. I didn't know what that something was, but I knew it was there. It was enough to put a smile on my face.
The improvements came quickly. Two weeks after the day that photo was taken—two weeks after my first ride on him—I made another post on my blog in which I wrote "we managed to land the first jump of our little course quietly enough that we could go straight on to the line after it without having to halt and circle in between."
I took a lot of pictures of him that day, including this one:
Two weeks after that we had our matchy-matchy day. I cantered him up the hill behind the outdoor after our lesson, and then Allie and I took a ton of pictures outside the arena and down in the lower ring. It was just the right time to get some pretty autumn leaves, and also the perfect time for him to slobber all over my leg because why not, right?
Our rides were tricky for a while there—he had this habit of ducking out to the right when I didn't set him up properly coming up to a fence, and it was a frustrating experience figuring out how to correct myself so that he couldn't do that anymore (and I still failed sometimes, including rides as recent as one I had about a month ago). Still, he was stronger, and we weren't barreling through lines anywhere near as much anymore, and we were getting a little better every ride.
I started riding outside of my lessons, thanks to Mary letting me come out and ride whoever needed to stretch their legs, so I got to hack him around pretty regularly and we had some pretty solid selfie photo shoots on those days, even when it was so cold and windy that the jumps were blowing over.
I took a lot of pictures of him during those rides, but this is one of my favorites:
I kept getting more and more comfortable on him as the both of us got stronger, and even though I definitely wasn't perfect (and neither was he), we just kept getting better and better. I started to become more at ease over fences again, and it showed in the expressions on my face when I jumped him (even if I was rocking the chicken wing arms).
I had a beautiful ride on him in March of last year. It was about sixty degrees out and the outdoor was dry for the first time in ages, and we hacked around outside for a while. I don't have any specific posts from that day, but I remember being happy because he was being a good stretchy pony, and afterwards, I borrowed Allie's selfie stick, only to wind up with this gem by accident (and yes, it really was an accident):
He put dumb smiles on my face all the time. This wasn't an exception.
We had a great ride about a month later, enough for me to post: "But Solly was so good today????? He was being all stretchy and letting me have a nice feel of his mouth and it just felt so good to have him listen like that because it’s so frustrating most of the time and today he was just like 'Here you go!'"
My rides on him in lessons have diminished since last summer, what with the consignment horses that I've been riding and the increasing numbers of other students, but I still had the opportunity to hack him around pretty regularly. Every single ride (even the frustrating ones) was a joy, because he was such a little squish and cuddling him was never not a good time.
I had a lesson on him in December, the day after Christmas, and the post that I made on my blog about it was full of good things. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't copy all of it over here, but it's all so important that I feel like I have to:
"Actually, now that I think about it, the greatest thing about yesterday was not that I had a really good ride.
It was that I got on Solly for the first time a week after he got to the barn in September 2015 and I jumped him that day and we didn’t have brakes or balance or straightness. We had to halt or circle after every fence. I had subsequent rides where we would have run-out after run-out from fences which weren’t even big. It was impossible for me to sit his canter for the longest time, and I wasn’t comfortable in half-seat either.
Yesterday was easy. Yesterday was like breathing. Sure, some things were a little messy and could do with some refining, but everything happened. We didn’t have to stop. I wasn’t sitting up there half-halting relentlessly in an effort to get him to come back and slow down. I stayed in a quiet half-seat with the exception of when I sat to help him up to a couple of fences. We didn’t take down any jump standards due to crookedness like we did the first time I rode him. There were no refusals and no run-outs and every time it was my turn to go through the course, we just picked up and went, no questions asked.
It was a victory for me because of all of the things that I wrote about yesterday, but it was also a victory because of how far we’ve come. A year ago, this wouldn’t have happened. A year ago, we were both still a mess. Now he’s the easiest horse to jump in the barn.
Yesterday I had fun, and that’s something that doesn’t always happen anymore."
I took some video and a bunch of pictures when I got on him on February 25, and this one made it on to my blog:
My caption was "He is the cutest and I love him."
That is the last good picture I have of him. I've taken some in the couple of weeks since that day, but that is the last full-on shot that I have of him and his adorable little face. That is the last shot I have of him in the saddle pad that I bought with him in mind. That is the last shot of him that I have which is him.
Yesterday I went out to the barn thinking it was going to be any other Friday. I'd ask who I was riding, ride them, spend some time goofing around and getting sidetracked with Allie, and then I'd leave and be home somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00.
Instead, for the first time in the twelve years since I started taking riding lessons, I had to put that knowledge of colic signs to use as I was getting him ready to ride. I knew him, and I knew that something was wrong, and I knew that the first thing I had to do was get him walking, and it wasn't easy. He wanted to lay down the entire time, and he managed it once, and it was utterly terrifying watching him roll on the ground while I tried to keep the lead rope out of the way of his legs.
It was utterly terrifying every time he started to go down again, every time I had to flick the end of the lead rope behind me and kiss at him and beg him to keep moving. I hand-walked him for over an hour and people kept offering to take over so that I could have a break, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't. It hardly took any time for me to feel the strain in my right arm from pulling on his halter to keep him moving and upright, and my tall boots are not designed for walking in, but I could not stop.
I couldn't do anything for my horse that night seven years and four months ago. He was hurt and I didn't know and while we both walked out of it okay in the end, there was nothing I could do. I didn't even get to say goodbye to him because I was so concussed and out of it that there is a forty-five minute blank spot in my memory. There was so much guilt there for so long because I felt like I should've known something was wrong, like I could've fixed it, even though it was a freak accident and it really was out of my control.
I didn't know if I could do anything for Solly, but I was going to try, and so I did. I walked him, and walked him, and walked him, and held his head up when the vet came and tranquilized him and did the exam, and I stood with him while we waited for the trailer to get hooked up, and I walked him onto it so that he could go to the surgeon and they could try to fix him.
They tried.
They couldn't.
He wasn't my horse. I had no claim to him. I didn't own him, I didn't lease him, I haven't lessoned regularly on him in months. I still love him to pieces. I still don't know how to respond to this. I spent today laying in bed watching baking shows, even though I have about five emails to respond to and a bunch of work to get done, because distracting myself is the only way to keep it from hurting too much. I'm still waiting for it to go numb, because I know it will. It did with Nugget, eventually.
All I can think of right now when I think of Solly is walking him into that trailer. All I can think of right now is his face, the sleepy eyes from the tranq and the rush to get him out of there. All I can think of is last night and how it went so horribly, terribly wrong.
I know that'll change. I know that'll change because it took me seven years but it changed with Nugget. It changed and I gained the ability to remember all of the love that I had for him and every great day that we had together instead of focusing on the night that we lost it all.
I don't know how long it's going to take for it to change with Solly, but I do know this: I have a blog and a phone and a hard drive full of pictures and videos and little summaries of my rides with him. I have so many days which have been immortalized, which is something that I didn't have with Nug. I have all of these memories saved through a combination of ones and zeros, things that I can look back on knowing that they were real.
I have so many happy days to look back on with him, and I don't know how long it's going to take all of those memories to overwhelm the ones from last night, but I know they will. I do. They have to.
Last time, I didn't get to do this. Last time, I didn't have all these records of all of these memories. Last time, I lost all of it on a night that I barely even remember, and all I had to show for it was a concussion, a massive scrape on my shoulder, a couple of halters, and a massive anxiety disorder as proof that it ever even happened. Last time there was no prior experience, no memorial, no nothing, because I was thirteen years old and my entire world had been ripped out from under me and I didn't know how to deal with that and I was alone.
I'm not that kid anymore, and even with that experience, I don't know how long it's going to take for all of this to stop feeling so raw. I don't know how long it's going to take all of us to find our new normal. All I know is that we will, and I am so, so glad that I don't have to go it alone again.
That's the difference that I keep trying to remind myself of here: none of us are alone. None of us are alone in this. All of our barn family that knew and loved him are grieving him together, in our own ways.
In the midst of all of it last night, as I was driving home, all I could think to myself was "It's always down to the three of us. It's always Allie, Mary, and me." We've grown over the years, moved barns, collected more people, but since that very first summer almost four years ago, they've been where I could turn. They've watched me go through so much and they've helped me along the way, and as much as I wish that we weren't in this situation at all, I'm so grateful for the fact that we have each other. I'm grateful that we can go through it together.
If I've learned anything since that night over seven years ago, it's that loss is never easy, but going it alone makes it so much worse. I know that we're going to hold each other up through this. I know that we're all going to handle it together. I know that we're never going to be able to fill that space that he left, but time is going to help us put things back together again.
I don't know exactly how we'll do that, but what I do know is that we'll find another horse that needs us, another horse that needs Mary's deep and unending love for all of her animals, another horse that needs my stubbornness and tendency to get attached to horses that aren't mine because I have loved these animals for as long as I can remember and a little thing like ownership isn't going to stop me, another horse that is going to get the knowledge and expertise and care of all of us in the barn so that we can give it a wonderful life, and we are going to have that memory of Solly pushing us to keep trying.
I love you, little man, baby horse, tiny ginger. You came into my life at the perfect time, just as I was getting back into things, and you helped me remember what it means for this whole thing to be fun. You made me a better rider and a better person and I'm not going to forget the things you taught me anytime soon.
You know, I don't really believe in heaven, but for your sake, I hope there is one, because you deserve to be there. I don't know if Nug is up there with you yet—he's about the same age as me, so he should still have some time left—but if he is, say hello to him for me. If he isn't, please keep an eye out for him and take care of him when he gets there. You're my best boys. I wish you hadn't had to go so soon.
My song after I lost Nugget was Breathe. I don't really know what my song is right now, but as I was lying in bed last night waiting to fall asleep, I had You and Me by Matthew Barber playing on repeat over my headphones. I don't really know who the "you" is, but it helped. It steadied my heart rate and calmed me down, and maybe that's why I chose it. I don't know.
Either way, thank you for everything, Solls. I'm going to love you forever, and there's nothing in this world that can change that. Every time I think I don't have enough room left in my heart, you guys just keep finding ways to carve out another space. It's not the same love—it's never the same love—but it comes in the same amount. It may leave me open to a lot more hurt, but all of you have taught me that it's better to love deeply and be hurt than to never love at all.
These horses have given me so much, and I wouldn't be who I am without them. There's absolutely no way that I wouldn't be thankful for that.
Until we meet again, Solitaire.
(There's probably some typos in this. I've had a stress migraine all day. I'll reread it and fix them tomorrow.)
This isn't an abnormal occurrence—I've gone back at least once a year (and usually more than that) since I graduated back in June of 2014. I've gone back because I still had friends there, because I wanted to check up on them and be there and see them graduate. I've gone back on school days and on weekends, at times when I needed a little reminder of where I've been and at times when I just felt like making a visit. It's not unusual for me to drop in from time to time, just to see what's going on.
The difference now is that my friends are gone. They've graduated, moved on, and I'm not especially close to most of them anymore—such is life, right? I see some of them occasionally, but they're not on that campus anymore. They aren't still walking those halls. This year's seniors were freshmen the year I graduated, and when I go back to visit next year, there won't be any students left who were there at the same time I was.
Those people—both my friends and the ones who simply shared those halls with me—aren't the reason why I go back, if I'm being honest.
That campus is something out of a dream. That campus is unreal, beautiful, and incredibly separated from everything else that's going on in the world—I suppose that was the whole point, though, wasn't it? The Senior School was built on that land to give its students an escape from the city, a beautiful place to learn and grow and become something, though what that something should be is entirely up for debate, at least in my mind.
That campus has my name on it, quite literally. There is a brick in the walkway across the quad with my name carved into it, and while that probably seems absurd (and is absurd), that's just the way of things at the Academy. When you graduate, you get your brick, and that's the end of it. It's there to mark your presence on that campus, whether you'd been attending that school for twelve years or two, to say that you fulfilled the requirements and accepted your diploma.
When I was in high school, that brick was everything. That brick was the finish line, the sign that I'd made it through, and there was more than one occasion where, when I was miserable, my mother would tell me I could switch schools if it was really so bad, and my only response was "I'm going to get my brick." I was going to leave my mark on that campus, even if it—and my presence—didn't mean anything to anyone else.
They did (and do) mean something, though.
When I went back on Friday, I pulled into a space in the Hillman lot (while laughing at the fact that all of the students have to park in the baseball lot right now—sucks to be you) and I walked up those stairs and across that quad, and then I wound my way through the groups of students leaving their classes and going to lunch—students that I don't recognize, students who probably don't know me at all even though over a hundred of them heard the speech I gave senior year—and I walked into the history office. I walked into the history office to find my teacher from sophomore and junior year sitting there talking to some other members of the department, and that was that.
We talked for a bit, and I updated him on what was going on in my life, and he asked me if I'd been having a lot of Charlie Brown moments recently—a reference that only really means something to the two of us, a reference to something he used to do to make me laugh at my own sadness, even if it only lasted a second—and I wasn't lying when I grinned and said "No, we're past that." I'm not past having panic attacks and depressive episodes—I'll probably never be past that completely—but I'm past hating the world every day.
I'm past being unable to say "Good" and mean it when people ask me how I'm doing. I'm past medicating my way through school days with ibuprofen and caffeine, and then crashing immediately after getting home on Friday because I'm physically exhausted from being unable to sleep. I'm past spending more time sad than I am happy, past blaming myself, past the guilt and the inability to let go. I'm a lot stronger than I used to be, better than I used to be, and I have to make sure he knows that because he checked up on me every day and that made it easier.
(He still refers to me with the exact same form of address that he did in high school, and I'm really glad that hasn't changed. It's like walking into a memory without having to remember all the bad parts.)
Then he had to leave to go meet with his advisee, so I wandered twenty feet down the hall, only to run into my OChem teacher. He was about to leave to go to WPIALs with the swim team, but we talked for a while and I told him about my internship and made him laugh with the remark that "I've been told I should get a full-time offer at the end as long as I don't burn the building down." I made a comment about how strange I found it that I was going to be graduating from college in just over a year, and he told me that life only gets stranger.
He told me that I'm one of the only people who seems to have managed to be reflective on my time at that school, that it's obvious that I learned something there, and he isn't wrong, but I've never done it on purpose. My reflections in high school—all those blog posts and journal entries I wrote, all those drafts of my senior sage—were things that I was doing to process something bigger, to process my own mental state rather than what was going on at school. I learned a lot along the way without meaning to, and it was impossible to forget how fortunate I was while I was there—the world I come from is not the world of most of my classmates, and I've never been able to forget that, even as I've learned how to pretend that that isn't the case.
And then he had to go meet the swim team so that they could head to my university for WPIALs, and I wandered out of the building and across campus to the dining hall, where I found my Frisbee coach/unofficial psychologist/actual favorite person from that school, whom I hadn't seen since June. We wandered back from the dining hall to sit outside the history office, where we talked about what I was doing, about my brother, about politics, and it was like it used to be, only it wasn't, because I'm no longer the person that I was all those times that he would sit with me during free periods to talk me down from that cliff I was in danger of jumping off of.
I'm not that person anymore. I haven't been that person in a long time, and yet I still keep going back, and that difference is the exact reason why.
I was miserable when I walked those halls every day, trying relentlessly to hold onto my sanity and keep pushing forward even when it felt like I couldn't. It wasn't the school that did that to me—it was my past and my brain—but being there certainly didn't help. I knew I didn't fit the mold while I was there, much as I tried to, and my bitterness and cynicism didn't exactly endear me to my peers. I did what I could to get through it, and a lot of that meant talking to the adults who surrounded me.
My algebra and calculus teachers are no longer there—they retired the same year I graduated—but they always looked out for me. They believed in my intelligence even when I wasn't sure of it, and I still have my calculus teacher's advising comments from third term senior year. They're saved in my filing cabinet in my room, where I can pull them out whenever I need a reminder that one of the most brilliant people I know thinks that I underestimate my own abilities and my own mind, though I've been doing that much less often as of late.
I can't go back for them, but I can go back for the others. I can go back for the teachers who supported me, who talked to me after school or during free periods, who knew that things weren't always as I would've liked inside my head, who cut me a break when I needed it but still pushed me to succeed anyhow. I did some of my best work in my most difficult classes, managed to produce things that I'm still proud of to this day, and that serves as an excellent reminder when I'm stressed out in college—if I could do that, all of that, when my mind wasn't with me, then I can definitely do way more when it is.
I can go back to show them that they didn't waste their time on me, that their effort and their support was appreciated, that it worked and it let me move forward and make something of myself. I can go back to show them that while some people might move on without ever considering what they're leaving behind, I haven't forgotten and I never will. I might not visit so much after next year, after I graduate and start working full-time, but it's always going to be there in the back of my mind.
I go back because that place grounds me, because it reminds me of how absurd this whole thing that we call life is, because that brick in that walkway on that quad is proof that I was there even if I'm the only one that it matters to. I go back because now, when I walk those halls, I don't feel small. I don't feel out of place. I feel like I've been let in on this great big secret that none of the students there currently understand—this great big secret that some of them may never understand—and it makes everything easier. I go back because I finally learned. All it took for me to do it was leaving.
I'm not who I used to be. I'm not who I was when I was there. I'm more hopeful, more driven, more successful (more sarcastic). I'm not trapped in my own thoughts anymore. I've achieved a lot that I'm proud of (as I have every right to be) and I don't feel the need to shrink myself anymore. I've earned the right to be comfortable with who I am, and while I may look back on some things that could've gone a lot better, I've made my peace with them. I've made my peace with the past, and I'm not living in it anymore.
I don't go back to be there. I go back because that's how I know that I'm never really going back. It's over, and it's done, and I can give my thanks without longing for what was.
I don't long for it because I didn't peak in high school, and I feel sorry for all the people who did.
(Although, I will admit that it's a little bit lot of an ego boost having people that I so deeply respect be so excited to see me. I'm not ashamed.)
