Aston’s showing debut

I have no words.

 

That’s a lie. I have too many words.

But mostly, I have lots of feelings. How do you describe these feelings?

 

When a horse you have raised and trained yourself goes to his first horse show and places 5^th in his first class and 1^st in his second class, to applause from all the spectators.

 

 

When the In-Hand Trail class shows that you have improved in every area of your training, and your Freestyle performance to No Tengo Dinero makes the audience laugh when they hear the song’s title translated.

When you hug your horse in the middle of an arena that was all yours, and you truly forget all the tears, all the frustration and anger, all the stress, because you did something with your horse and he did so much better than you could have expected.

When you go camp at the showgrounds, and see the stains from the last time you used the tent – which was two years earlier when your horse was an infant and needed to eat every four hours.

When you are going through the familiar exhilarating phases of a horse show that you have missed so much – from braiding his mane to picking up your number to cleaning a stall to memorizing the course – only now you are doing it with your own horse.

 

When you hear your horse’s name and number called over the loudspeaker, and you have to shake your head to see if you are dreaming.

 

When your horse does everything you ask of him, every in-hand trail maneuver, every command, on the first try and with a perfect attitude, such that no one would guess that he was a stallion.

When you had such extreme doubts about how he would do, you just had to run the mantras “participation is perfection” and “we are doing this for experience” through your head and resign yourself to surviving… and your horse blew even your expectations out of the water.

When you’re holding your trophy and ribbons in your hands, thinking that while you have asked and gotten advice from over 20 different trainers and breeders, you have done all the work with the same hands that hold those prizes.

When you are overwhelmed with texts and congratulations from your friends from around the world who have been telling you all weekend that they are cheering for you and believe in you, even when you didn’t believe in yourself.

 

When you are having a quiet moment with your horse on the grass as a reward, and you remember the comments that have stung the most over the last two years:

 

She must not really have financial problems, if she can afford a horse.

 

Oh… he’s cute. His legs are bad though.

 

That horse looks awful… before you think about showing you should learn how to feed a horse.

 

Oh my gosh, you need to get a vet out. my horse is your horse’s age and look how much bigger, healthier, and fatter he looks.

 

Have you ever dewormed him before? Do you know anything about taking care of a young horse?

 

Well, he will be a nice horse to take on walks in the woods.

 

He still has so many unknowns in his future, and I have no idea where he will end up. He may still “only” be a trail horse (by the way, I would trust “only a trail horse” more than I would trust a banker with my family fortune). But if that’s the case, he’ll go to the woods with a first place ribbon on his bridle and the most proud and loving human mom on his back.

Some seismic shift

“Wow… you’re really mean.”

 

The months of crippling migraines didn’t make me finally decide to slam on the brakes.

 

The two falls from horseback, one causing traumatic injury, did not cause me to stop my breakneck pace.

 

The times I tried to stop and think when was the last time I did something for fun with a friend? Do I have any friends? and then quickly changed my train of thought didn’t make me stop in my tracks and say “something’s gotta give.”

 

It was that simple statement from my husband, the man who knows and understands me better than anyone else on earth, and who normally enjoys laughing at human idiocy as much as I do, that caught my attention.

 

I had relayed something that a coworker had said that was facepalm-worthy, and then confided it to Jonas. When I relayed the joke that I had wanted to make in return, Jonas hadn’t laughed, but was surprised that I was so harsh and cutting in my response to this poor young fellow.

 

The rest of my conversations and interactions throughout the day ran through my head, and I realized most of them were on par with this comment. Some of them were even more… well, I would have said intelligent and witty, but now I was doubting my self-evaluation of my humor.

If my adoring husband was calling me mean, that meant that somewhere, a drastic change had been undergone.

At some point, my “someone at this place has to be cheerful and funny, it may as well be me!” approach had been replaced with “let’s at least laugh about something here,” and joy had been slowly suffocated along the way.

 

The time had come to really stop, and look at what I was carrying with me wherever I went. Why was I judging every living person through such harsh lenses? Why was every little inconvenience such a cause for a string of profanity? When did every living, breathing person become a smiling mask to hide a crook’s visage? What had put these lenses over my eyes to see the world this way?

 

I stopped on the deserted road that I had been running, or slogging down. Barren to the left, barren to the right. Bleak gray clouds overhead, straight and barren road leading to god-knows-where ahead. I remembered the road behind, ten years of university studies, and master’s programs, and moving across the world, and all sorts of jobs. All bleak and barren behind me. Nothing to show for all my churning and running. No one chasing me, no one yelling after me. There was only one thing it could be. No escaping now.

 

Time to stop and turn, to face the demons sitting on my back.