On Solly.

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.)

On going back.

I visited my high school on Friday.

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.)

Until next time x