In my last post I discussed how terrible 2013 was and that I hoped 2014 would show me how good life can be, and how much I have to live for. I really had no idea how right I would be about that.
Shortly after the beginning of the year, I decided I was done with riding. I was ready to walk away from one of the only two passions I've had my entire life. I was done because it wasn't fun anymore, and I didn't realize how much that had to do with my state of mind. I never rode Patrick again, but I did give him to my trainer who is currently using him as a lesson horse. He's mostly ridden by a woman who adores him, and he seems happy.
Monty is gone. This was hard for me, as when I bought him, he'd had a rough life. I promised him a "Black Beauty" ending. But because I was no longer riding Patrick, Monty was all I had left to ride, and he became the main reason that riding became a chore instead of a hobby. When you're emotionally unstable and suffering from anxiety, you don't need a hard horse. You need something easy and fun. But Monty was hard, because it had been so long since he was ridden regularly, and he's always had a bit of an attitude. So after advertising him on the internet as a free (but hard to ride) horse, I found a great new home for him with someone who was familiar with difficult horses. We are facebook friends and she posts lots of updates about him and his training. He seems happy, which makes it all easier. I feel like I let him down, but maybe sometimes giving someone a happy ending means letting them move on to a better situation.
Enter Roanin.
In March, I told my trainer my plan to stop riding. She understood where I was coming from but encouraged me to take a couple lessons on a horse that belonged to one of her other boarders. She said that if I wasn't having fun on him, I could consider giving it up. I relunctantly agreed, thinking we were prolonging the inevitable, that I had fallen out of love with horses and that it was over.
Roanin completely proved me wrong. He's a really cool horse, very straightforward to ride, but not always easy. He's a Connemara (typically a pony breed), but a giant one, measuring 16.1hh. He's still very much a pony, though: grumpy old man personality, stubborn, but patient and tolerant with a heart of gold. I fell in love with him after the first ride, went to the barn every day for a week, and discovered that Roanin was actually for sale. A couple days later, I had him vetted and he was mine. I've been riding him nearly every day since the end of March.
Until then, any sort of pressure or responsibility made me crumble from stress, even 8 months after I had left my job in customer support. Because even though I had been released from the hospital, and even though I was "better," I still wasn't "me." Not yet.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again
They really got it right with that nursery rhyme. It's impossible for all the horses and all the men to help when you've been spiraling out of control for the better part of a year. But I think it's possible that maybe with the help of the right man and the right horse, he would have been able to put himself together.
Because once I started riding Roanin, things really turned around for me. He became my horse, my therapist, my beloved friend. He showed me what other people had been telling me for months: that it gets better, that there are things worth living for, that life isn't always as bad as it has been. Suddenly I had responsibility that I wasn't shying away from. Days when I couldn't ride, I found myself at the barn just to see my horse and spend time with my friends. I started working for my trainer as a groom and started to feel whole again.
A couple weeks after we bought Roanin, Woody told me that he was so thankful for Roanin every day, because Roanin brought me back to him. And it's true: the horse saved my life, in more ways than one.
It was just a little over a year ago when everything fell apart in my life. Even though I didn't hit rock bottom until December, Patrick's surgery was toward the end of May. But now I am happier than I've ever been, thanks to Roanin, and thanks to Woody with his endless love and support.
Just one horse, just one man. And I'm finally back together again.
