Thinking The Thinks, Part II

A little more introspection tonight, and I've come to realize a few things. Mainly, my biggest problem in ALL of this nonsense is just... ME. I'm the real issue here. And now I need to figure out what to do about that.

This post is probably going to be horribly depressing and boring, and also largely about me and not horses, so skip over it if that's not your thing.

I'm a little upset to see that I recognize this kind of strange state I'm in, when I really clear away the excess and take a good hard look at it. I was 16 when 9/11 happened, and I had such horrible PTSD from that experience that I spent a few years in a terrifying spiral - honestly it's a miracle I'm still here, I tried to kill myself so many times that statistically I should have succeeded at least one of those times! 

I got better eventually. I'm not really sure what fixed it, god knows it wasn't all of the therapies and doctors and hospitalizations that did it. Mostly I think the horses did all of the heavy lifting for me emotionally, and eventually I just sort of got better. And I was good for a very long time.

When Gogo died, everything changed again. Everything that I thought I knew - every pattern in my existence - completely fell apart, and I was cast out into the strange vast unknown, into a world I didn't understand and had no idea how to navigate through without my best friend there beside me. And I'm still, 2.5 years later, just not right. I'm not a fighter anymore, I'm a complete defeatist. I throw my hands up after every mildly bad ride and say, "she hates to do XYZ thing, I don't want to do this anymore, I can't do this!" I don't strategize and mull things over and learn better ways and tackle things again tomorrow, I just give up. I throw myself randomly at other sports and try to see if things will stick, but they never really do. I eat garbage food and sit idly on the couch for hours, because I just don't care. I gained probably almost 20lbs (I'm not fat but I'm definitely not the muscular, fit, trim little bird that I used to be). I'm stagnant and lifeless a lot of the time. I panic about trying to get back into the sport that Gogo and I once loved so much, largely in part because of the success she and I had together, and how I'm so terrified that it will have lost all the magic for me now. I can't even do a 20m circle without feeling defeated some days, or even trot a crossrail sometimes. More days than not, I find myself wondering why the hell I'm even on this planet, and what the point of it all is.

I'm not anywhere near as bad as I was when 9/11 happened, thank god, but it's a very similar state of being lost in this shocky kind of state following a really tragic event. I feel like I've completely lost everything that I once knew about myself, and now I still have no idea who the hell I am, where I'm going, or what I'm doing here and why.

How do you get your motivation back when you don't see a point to anything? It's not a very fun place to be in. And I don't have an answer for it really.

The sole consolation here is that I know a lot of you know largely what I am going through - you've lost heart horses too, and have new horses who you love and adore, but you just kind of feel like you're floundering and not picking up where you thought you were going to. I know you know how I feel, and I know how you feel in turn. And it sucks. It sucks a lot.

The good thing about all of this is that I know full well that I can't sit around and say, "oh well, O just hates to do dressage, or she has bad jumping form, or her tummy is going to be too sensitive for endurance, or she's too slow for barrels," etc etc, all the things I tell myself after a terrible ride... those are all excuse that *I* make in order to be LAZY. I am just giving MYSELF a reason to mope around at home when I say those things. I can't blame her hotness, or her past experiences, or anything else, because she is a product of her environment and training, and that means that I haven't been giving her the kind of rides she really needs to improve. This is a talented, fun, wild little mare, and if I work hard enough I know I can get there with her. But I have to look myself in the face and ask the hard questions of what I am going to do about this weird funk that I am in. How exactly am I planning to get out of this, what steps do I need to take.... how do I get my listing ship back upright before it sinks?

It's a weighty kind of thing to think about.

But, it is reassuring to understand, "it's not the horse, it's me."

 Dressage *is* for every horse. Every horse can do dressage. And every reasonably sound horse should do it. It may not competition-worthy dressage, but all basic dressage is is making a horse supple, responsive, and able to carry itself lightly and easily through its work. It doesn't have to be in a dressage saddle, or in a snaffle, or in an arena. Dressage can be in jeans and a barrel saddle and a hackamore and out on the trail - and we do that often! And that to me is quite satisfying, because I feel like we can really get some quality work in that way.



One thing is for sure though. I recognize this pattern in myself and I will not fall down the slippery slope again. I know where it leads. I'm not doing it again. I'm getting out of this funk before I slip any deeper into it.

The question really is, where do I begin...

By the way, I found some more pictures of the hunt, and O being of course perfect:

Can you find us in these shots? Look hard, we're in all of them!

And yes, that is a barrel horse in a western saddle with his owner in jeans and a sweatshirt, and a rope horse in a rope saddle. Because that's how we do in Texas.