Horse Play and July 14th

My entire life when I was younger centered around my master plot of getting a horse. It was made clear to me that it wasn’t going to come by way of a real horse, so I would always pretend that I had a horse and at times I would go as far as to pretend that I was the horse, just to keep things fresh. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t put up a good fight to get a real horse though. I can remember coming home from school one day and part of my daily routine spanning 2^nd-4^th grade (as anyone’s was) was to read the “miscellaneous” and “animals for sale” classifieds in the Elko Daily Free Press. Why would I do this you ask? Well the obvious answer is that I was looking to see what horses were on the market, duh. I would compare prices, height in hands, calculate price per hand as compared to the other horses and breeds, then I would pretend that I owned these horses and I would name them. I was a total weirdo. The sad part is, I still do this, except I research the hell out of Frye boots. Ask any of my friends. I’ve become a local boot consultant. Anyhow, one particular day after school when I was perusing through the classifieds, I found a great deal on an Appaloosa Mare. She was very old and many hands tall. In other words, she was a big ole horse. I knew that she was the horse for me, so I picked up the phone and called the number. No one answered, so I left a message saying that I was interested in buying their horse and asked that they call me back. It was the perfect plan. I would set up delivery of the horse to my front yard so when my parents came home from work they would see a horse in our yard and because we didn’t have a trailer to drive her anywhere, we’d have to not only pay for her, but keep her! She wasn’t going to live in our yard naturally, because I already had researched the cost of boarding her at the local fair grounds. Screw you Gifted and Talented test for not qualifying me! I just devised a plan on how to school my parents into getting me a horse in my early elementary years. I am either extremely gifted or a psychopath, or both. Great. Things are starting to make sense now…I can’t remember when the horse owners called back, but they did. They spoke to my parents, and as you can imagine they were pretty confused, both parties. I did not end up with a horse. So, I then proceeded to pretend that I was my own horse (Plan B). I stopped reading the newspaper and started barrel racing after school. Except I didn’t have barrels (I used cans) I didn’t have a horse (so I used myself on rollerblades) and I didn’t have a score board to use to time myself (I used a stopwatch). I would proceed to “barrel race” myself I guess, up and down the sidewalk and try to beat my best time. What a gem I am.

Point being, I went to very strange realistic and imaginary lengths to try and get any time I could with a horse. I never would’ve imagined that 20 something years down the road that I would be blessed with the best horse experience anyone could ask for.

July 14^th Aiken Equestrian Rescue

We went to a horse rescue ranch this morning. I met a horse named Fia Mia. When I first walked up to her she glanced up from her trough and swished her tail. I glanced at her and walked down to see another horse whose head was peeking out of his stall. I stood there and gave him a pat and enjoyed taking in all of his “horseness.” I heard a snort and turned around. Fia Mia had her head out of her stall, so I walked down to see her. As I approached her, she hung her nose out and was waving at me in a sense. The closer I got, the farther she hung her head over the stall until our faces were about 4 inches away from each other. Our eyes locked and immediately, I had chills. Fia Mia pressed her cheek against mine. My eyes welled up with tears. I could feel a breakdown happening, so I stroked her nose and walked through the stables and out into the open field to take a couple of deep breaths.

We rode around the ranch and Marco loved feeding the horses and riding in the golf cart. When we made our way back up to the stables I stopped back by Fia Mia’s stall. Same thing happened, she walked right up to me again and layed her head on my shoulder and pressed her weight into me. It was the strangest feeling, I could feel her weight, but could also feel mine leaving me. Not my physical weight, but emotional weight was lessening. My shoulders felt lighter, my stomach and back felt lighter, my jaw didn’t feel tense. We stood in this entwined human and horse hug for what seemed like forever. Before I knew it, a rush of emotions come over me and my neck and chest feel wet. I had so many tears running down my face that it feels like I turned on a faucet. My eyes became cloudy and I couldn’t stop crying. Fia Mia would pull her head back and stare at me every once in a while, then would wrap her neck around me and pull me into her body. It was absolutely incredible. I let her hug me and I stood there and cried my little heart out, not caring who was standing around watching or what people who be saying or questions I was going to have to answer once I was done. I let all the bullshit go and stood there in public, being hugged by a horse and cried. Fia Mia absorbed all the fear, anxiety, worry, distress and whatever other toxic feelings were overwhelming me. That horse single handedly (even though she’s a large horse, get it?) let a wall come down for me and allowed me to take a real breath, not the short thick aired breaths that I had been surviving on for the past weeks.  There truly are no words that can even describe that moment for me, even reading this back over I think the writing sucks and doesn’t paint the picture of what it was like for me in that moment, and then I realize, that is the beauty of that memory, that makes it my own and unique. I can close my eyes and remember everything vividly, yet I can’t possibly put the moment into words What I can put into words though is that I did not journal any more on my vacation. I didn’t have to run upstairs and hide to release any feelings I was having, because there was none. I played with the kids on the fairway, chased Marco around the neighborhood, swam with him in the pool, smiled, laughed and enjoyed those moments that I had missing because I was too damn paralyzed with the unknown. Fia Mia gave me the gift of “being” and that is something that I will never, ever forget and something that I appreciate every morning when I wake up and see her framed face on my gallery wall. I got my horse after all.