safe spaces

Isn’t it amazing how you can be a stone’s throw away from a place on a physical level but feel like you’re in an entirely different world?

Yesterday marked two months since Cooper and I moved to my trainer’s barn (and today is four years since he was first listed on CANTER!), and I can’t quite wrap my brain around it because it simultaneously feels like it’s been forever and no time at all. One part of me wishes that we could’ve done this years ago, but another part knows that Cooper wouldn’t have been physically or psychologically ready for it any sooner. I probably wouldn’t have been physically or psychologically ready for it sooner.

There was a lot of stuff that I sat on for years, things that were in my head that I didn’t—couldn’t—talk about because I didn’t know who was safe to say it to or because I didn’t want to drag them into it or because I know the horse world can treat people terribly and what I experienced wasn’t that bad, right, or, or, or. It sat there in my head and it festered and it manifested in this little voice that told me that I was ruining my horse, that I wasn’t a good rider, that I’d never be enough, that everything that I thought I knew from when I was a kid was a dream rather than a lived reality. It was that same little voice that made me cry in the car on the way home from the barn when I was in college so many times that I lost count, that burned me out, that made me not only resent but hate these animals and this sport and nearly everything that it had brought into my life to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to want to be involved in it again.

My last barn was where I needed to be when I was there. I needed a place with no goals or expectations so that I could figure out how riding was going to fit into my life again, to remember that not everywhere in the horse world is toxic, to have fun and try to not think.

I say “try” because that little voice was still there, all the time, always, and I would sit there and do my best to ignore it because I knew there were kids around who looked up to me, who looked at me and saw something that they wanted to be, who didn’t hear the voice telling me that I wasn’t good enough for my horse and I should stop trying, that I would never be able to solve the problems that I was having and that I should just give up. There were moments when it quieted—when my trainer visited us or we visited her, mostly, and I was reminded that I’m maybe not wholly incompetent for a brief period of time—but it always came back, and I was at a loss for how to get rid of it. To some degree I think I just resigned myself to the fact that it would be there forever, that I was never going to go back to that same easy peace that I had as a kid where horses were concerned, because it was too much and it had been too long and how do you undo all of the shit that I’d been carrying around with me for years at that point?

It was there, and then we moved, and then it wasn’t.

It didn’t go quietly—we already know it didn’t, I’ve written before about how I got so frustrated with myself that I wanted to cry during one of my first handful of lessons—but go it did. I had told my trainer bits and pieces of the story over the years, here and there as things were relevant, but she was at the top of the list of people that I didn’t want to drag into my mess because she only saw me once every few months, if that, and I quite frankly respect her too much to make it her problem. Once we moved, though, I had to tell her, because she needed to know why I ended up how I did, why I was struggling with the things I was struggling with, that if I ended up in tears during a lesson it wasn’t because of her or anything that she did or said, so… I told her.

I told her, and I told her, and those first few weeks, every walk break was another piece of the puzzle, another explanation for why I react the way I do to certain things, another bullet point on the list of things that I’m terrified of that I never used to even think about, and then… Then there wasn’t anything left to tell.

(I mean, there is, there always will be, but all the important stuff is out.)

She just sat there, and she listened, and she reminded me over and over and over again that I’m not in that place anymore, that the things that happened to me weren’t okay, that Cooper’s fine and I’m fine and that we’re going to figure it all out, and she let me take my walk breaks because I haven’t seriously ridden like this in years and my body has a lot to catch up on, and my brain did the exact same thing that it does every time I listen to White Ladder: it calmed the fuck down.

(To explain the White Ladder thing: my earliest clear memory of music is being in my car seat in the back of our van on the way home from visiting my grandparents, half-asleep, listening to Nightblindness, feeling warm and cozy and safe. I didn’t get the album back then, obviously—that’s an album that you have to grow up to even begin to understand—but my brain and my body associate it with that feeling of security on a subconscious level, and if I listen to it, it’ll calm me down no matter how worked up or anxious I am.)

On the one hand, that little voice shut up because I was finally able to do what a friend of mine described as “bleeding out the poison” when I explained it to her. On the other hand, that little voice shut up because (as I’ve said before) I’ve known my trainer for so long that when she tells me something, I just… listen. I don’t second-guess it, because there’s never been a reason to, because never in the sixteen years that I’ve known her has she lied to me about anything that mattered (she’s definitely lied, she lies through her teeth about how high fences are when she raises them on you in a middle of a lesson, but that’s perfectly fine hahaha). When she tells me that my horse is going to be okay, I believe her. When she tells me that we’ll sort my riding out, I believe her. When she tells me to go canter the baby gymnastic, I go canter the baby gymnastic, and it’s not always pretty and we definitely fuck it up sometimes, but we work through it and we get there in the end.

I’m not very far from any of the places that I’ve ridden. The horse community around here is pretty small, and so is the metro area (at least by big city standards). If I drive twenty minutes in any direction, I’ll hit four other barns that I’ve ridden (or, in the case of my last barn, boarded) at. I might as well be on another planet, though, because for the first time in over a decade, I feel safe.

I feel safe. I don’t worry about the rug being pulled out from under me. I don’t worry about who I’ll see when I go to the barn. I don’t worry about being pressured to spend money on things that I don’t need or to go to shows or to do anything other than what I want to do. I’m going along to groom for my trainer at a couple of shows this spring because I want to, because Cooper isn’t ready yet (my trainer and I are in agreement that the last two years were his “go out and see places and do things” years, and now it’s time be serious about being competitive) and she wants to give me the chance to be involved, and she knows that I’d rather feel useful than just stand around watching the whole time (but if I want to stand around and watch, that’s fine, I’m just on the hook for my meals and hotel in that instance). I go out to the barn four or five days a week and it doesn’t feel like a chore because I want to be there and I want to do my homework and I want to keep seeing us improve.

(For the record, I felt safe at my last barn, but this is just… different. It’s deeper, I guess.)

It’s been two months and I have an entirely different horse. I know I’ve been slacking on my weekly updates—life and exhaustion got in the way—but you guys. you guys. We still have a long way to go but I can’t even begin to describe how much better Cooper is doing. His biomechanics are better and he’s starting to land heel-first more consistently. He’s stretching over his topline and so much suppler in his body (my trainer has repeatedly described him as a 2×4 because he couldn’t separate the front and back halves of his body. Tonight I was trotting him around during someone else’s lesson and she looked at him and told me that he was consistently moving different sections of his body independently for the first time without me having to fight him for it for forty minutes to start).

We’ve had two rides in a row where he’s been into the contact without hanging on me and consistently moving at a pace where he can maintain his own balance. There’s a lot left to do—he still needs a metric fuckton of topline and hind end strength, and our canter remains a work in progress due to the aforementioned needed strength—but he’s come so far, and my trainer has nicknamed him “Super Cooper” because of how well he’s taking to everything. I’m also still a work in progress—though I think I’ll always be a work in progress—but I’m remembering how to stop riding defensively all the time, how to open my hip angle and sit, how to stay even across the tack and ride a proper half halt and set up a canter that gives us options. I’m getting to the end of my rides and I’m feeling positive about them. I get in the car and I drive home singing along to a playlist and I walk in the door smiling even after rides when Coops has Moments™, and the only tears I’ve shed so far have been ones of gratitude.

This sport is such a mind game. It’s always been a mind game. I got lucky that I grew up with trainers who only ever set me up for success and taught me to believe in what I could do. My trainer has said to me and several others in the barn that our issue is that we just don’t trust ourselves, that we know what to do and we need to believe it and not second-guess every decision we make. I’m not there yet, and I don’t think I’ll be there for a long time, but I’m a lot closer than I was even three months ago, and I feel secure in the fact that I’m in a place where I can make the mistakes that I need to make to figure it out again.

I’m never going to forget about all of the things that happened that led me to this point. They’re never going to go away, and they’re never going to be okay either, but they’re in the past. They aren’t what’s in front of me. They’re an experience that I can use to try and help the kids I know who are starting out to not make the same mistakes I did, to not assume that just because they can trust one trainer means that they should trust another, that your training environment should never involve pitting people against each other, that you should walk out of the barn after your lessons feeling empowered even if you’re also disappointed in how that particular ride went rather than feeling defeated day after day.

At the end of the day, really, I think this can all be summarized by one thing, though I’m sure she doesn’t remember it: when I was thirteen, about eight months after my accident, I went with a barn friend to the local mini trial so that I could see my trainer and be around horses, because I hadn’t seen her since I fell and wasn’t riding at the time (I couldn’t because of finances). I spent the day hanging around and watching her students ride, and when my dad came to pick me up, she hugged me (and she is not a hugger) and told me that if I ever needed anything, no matter what it was, horse-related or not, she wanted me to call her and she would be there.

It took thirteen years, but I made the call (well, text), and god am I glad that I did.