Discuss Amongst Yourselves

Molly cautioned me to watch my nutrition and take care of my body. One of the things I didn't mention was the fact that I've lost quite a lot of weight in the past couple of months. So much that very few of my clothes fit me anymore and I had to buy some new pants and skirts. I started with the size I usually wear, then had to step down a size and then another, to find things that I could wear right now. To add to the irony, I gave away all my skinny clothes because I thought there was no way I would get this skinny again, after infertility treatments and sliding headlong into perimenopause. Eating is something that doesn't cross my mind often, and sometimes when I do eat I feel like it wasn't worth it because I feel like crap after. Like everything else, I have to start slow and build back up to what's normal.

Cricket said a lot of nice things (as did everyone who took the time to comment), but I have to say that right now I don't have the time, the money or the will to go back into therapy. I've already spent years talking to professionals -- 6? 7? I've lost track -- and still I ended up here, even with the happy blue pills. I realize that the hallmark of someone who needs help is someone who refuses it, I understand that I am depressed and that my self-deprecating thoughts are counter-productive. I have to trust that I will know if and when it makes sense for me to go back to therapy, as I have before, and right now that doesn't feel right.

Julianna, my dear friend, thank you for letting me know you are still out there. People often tell me that I am strong, I have to be, otherwise how could I still be a functioning member of society after all the things that have happened to me. I am a survivor. While that may be true, I have survived, as I said in my last post, when I get depressed and defeated like I am now, instead of tapping into the strength that enabled me to get here, I feel the weight of my past like the earth on Atlas' shoulders and I stagger under it. This too shall pass.

GP in Montana told me that I should keep praying. I don't pray, because I don't believe in God or any higher power. There, I've said it out loud, written it down, and its posted on the internet for all to see: I am an atheist. I've often thought that the only way my childhood could have been more confusing or messed up was if my family had thrown religion into the mix. I know people who garner great comfort and joy from their faith and I don't have a problem with anyone praying to whatever or whomever they choose, its just not something that is a part of me. I don't believe that there is anybody out there looking out for me, taking care of me, or who loves me unconditionally, those are earthly pursuits in my world. I do believe that riding helps me a great deal and does keep me out of my head. Missy has taught me a lot of lessons in the last two years and I can only hope that my presence in her life has made it better. She needed a person and apparently, I needed a horse.

DinoD, thank you for reminding me again that this is a transitory state, and one that I have weathered before. Every day is different, some days I feel like I am making progress, and others, not so much. I wish I could keep moving forward instead of moving forward only to slip and fall backwards again, but that has always been the way that I eventually get through rough times.

Ollie and Kym, my longtime friends, thank you for being there. Writing does help me to sort out my thoughts, putting jumbled thoughts into words, then into a structure called a sentence, then a paragraph, creates order that no other endeavor does. In order to make it make sense to others, I have to create some order inside myself.

I know you would all rather be reading about and looking at pictures of horses, and I do have some new information and images to share on that front, but for now this is what I need to write about.

Alone In A Crowd

Left to my own devices I stay inside my head, and that is not a very friendly place for me to be. The dominant voice in there is extremely negative, I dare say she hates me; she bullies the other voice that tries to get a word in edge-wise when things get out of hand. There is the me that the outside world sees, the pretty, totally-put-together, smart and capable woman who looks 10 years younger than her real age...and then there is the real me, the girl who is profoundly sad and lonely, who cries a lot and at worst believes she should be punished for being so wicked and at best believes she deserves nothing. I'm scared. Scared every day that people will find out what a fraud I am.

With all due respect to Barbra, I am a person who needs people and I don't feel the least bit lucky. I've lost some very important satelites this year and without their signals I am feeling quite lost. I'm about to lose another from my time zone but I'm hopeful she'll still be able to broadcast from her new sector of the sky. According to a popular social networking site and my email contact list, I have well over 100 friends, yet I feel alone. I feel disconnected from almost everyone, and the one person I don't feel disconnected from is many hundreds of miles away in another country.

Even the shallow social constructs of the workplace are not available to me as a consultant. I am either working at home, alone, or I am sitting in a strange office for the day while I work at a client site. I have a couple of long-term clients that I visit regularly, at one I even have a designated cube that I have decorated with a few horse pictures, but I do not belong anywhere, I am not an employee and therefore are treated very differently than those around me.

Riding, in particular the type of riding I do, English and training to do show jumping, is for the most part a solitary endeavor. I admire and like the other riders at the farm, and I'm sure they admire and like me too, but we are not friends. We don't know anything about each other outside of what we see and discuss vis a vis our horses. Perhaps this is best, as I've already related, if they did know the real me they would probably shun me.

Since the beginning of the summer, in addition to the things I've already related, two people I knew died, I was evacuated from my home for 3 days because of a fire and my husband lost his job. In short, I'm a mess. I'm plagued by headaches, stomach issues and even had a panic attack recently. I tried to see my old doctor last week for the endometriosis but apparently I am not smart enough to navigate the health care system here, even though I've lived here for 20 years. She wasn't in my "group", so I have to start all over tomorrow, find a new doctor, make another appointment and probably wait another month. The good news is that now it only hurts when I ride. Small comfort.

I'm tempted to turn off the comments so the entire internet won't think I posted this as a pathetic means to gather support. Even more pathetic, I do need your support, even if you don't know me. More than that, I just needed to write this down. I can't just deal with one problem at a time, instead, when I am in crisis, I open up my Chest of Horrors and drag out lots of other things from my past, since they are all related. I pile them on top of my head until I topple over like the Flintstone's car when the bell-hop puts the plate of ribs on the window. I've never gotten over anything or anyone.

I will be OK. All I can do is keep repeating that until I believe it.

Scar Tissue

My old nemesis, endometriosis, has reared its ugly head once again. I've been relatively pain-free since my last laparoscopy about five years ago, but severe stress can bring on a flare-up and I certainly have had my share of that in the past few months. The pain is in exactly the same two areas that it always has been, which helps to keep me from thinking this is something new that's gone wrong in the long history of my fight with my reproductive system. However, having said that, since my older sister (by 15 months) had a partial hysterectomy earlier this year due to some other issues, until I know for sure there are moments when I am able to convince myself that I am dying from ovarian or cervical cancer. I tend to do that to myself, I am a catastrophist when it comes to my own life. I take "what's the worst that could happen" and manage to twirl that into something even worse.

At least I still have my horse. Yes, my sweet Missy is doing very well, sound, healthy and willing, and we've formed a strong bond that helps me so much. But...most days I am in too much pain to ride. Those days when I can ride it isn't for as long as I'd like. It turns out that riding is possibly the worst possible thing I can do to exacerbate the endo pain. Let's see: open up the pelvic bones by straddling a large object, then repeatedly put pressure on the affected areas by sitting then rising then sitting then rising...you get the picture. I feel so pathetic walking my horse around the arena with tears streaming down my face.

Since I no longer need the services of an RE I am going back to my original OB who I haven't seen in many years. My appointment is on the 30th, I'm thinking we won't get very far that day and I'll come back for an ultrasound then we'll have to talk about whether I have surgery again. If you've got any extra goodwill to share, I could use some right now.

This is just the tip of the despair iceberg, but it is what I feel comfortable sharing with the world right now.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Once again I find myself in a very, very dark place, but I am working on a post. Seems I can't go more than a few months without falling into a pit of despair. However, I know it is more detrimental to keep poison inside than to let it spill all over the ground.

Special Delivery

This little filly was a surprise last Saturday at the farm, at least two weeks early. You might notice that the foal looks nothing like the mare, that's because she's a surrogate. The biological mare kept losing babies (do they call it miscarrying in the horse world?), so the final time she was inseminated and the embryo was deemed viable, it was flushed from Judy and put into Pepe for the duration. The dam and sire of the filly are both full saddlebreds and Pepe is a quarter horse, but of course she doesn't know she isn't the "real" Mom and is being a wonderful mother. The night before the birth Pepe wasn't showing any signs so the next morning they put her and Judy in turnout like usual. About an hour later one of the workers noticed the baby safely nestled in the straw and alerted the owner. So Judy was the only one who got to witness the birth; I like to think of her as Pepe's equine midwife. The little one doesn't have a name yet, the owners can't agree on one since they were hoping for a colt (that'll teach them!), so for right now she's just Filly.







The other day I was getting Missy reading for her exercise on the lunge line, I had brought her down from her stall to the wash rack to put on the "boots" that protect her hooves and hocks. There is a big motorhome/horse trailer parked right there with an old beat up orange construction cone sitting behind it. She's standing quietly like she always does and I'm busy putting on her boots when I start to hear this sound sort of like a soft fog horn. Then again.

Missy was breathing into the top of the cone and making a sound like when you blow into a soda bottle! I was laughing so hard! She just kept doing it, maybe 5 or 6 times, she was enjoying it. She's such a talent, my girl.

Mares Eat Oats

The reason I stopped blogging was because the issues that were consuming me were deeply personal and private and didn't involve just me. Sometimes this public forum just isn't appropriate, as much as writing things down and getting feedback helps. I was able to do that with several people IRL, but the issues continue and I'm far from feeling like any kind of resolution has been reached or that resolution is even possible.

Despite the limbo on one front, I feel compelled to share the trials and triumphs with my beloved Missy. My first ride on her was May 20, 2007, so we've just passed our one year in-saddle anniversary, and I've been riding her exclusively since January. I convinced my trainer that continuing to ride the lazy quarterhorse lesson horses was not a good primer for learning to ride my hot thoroughbred.

Last year we went through a spell where she threw her head around so much it was nearly impossible to ride her, and it turned out that she had to have some dental work done. She has an overbite and some other dental issues and after she healed from the work (including the removal of several wolf teeth) she was much better. A couple of months ago she started the same kind of attitude, only this time it seemed much worse, so after a few weeks of extreme frustration and disappointment my trainer decided we would try a hackamore, which is basically just a bridle without a bit. Within a half hour she was a different horse. It seems counter-intuitive to be riding a hot horse with a hackamore, which is usually considered to have less control that a bridle with a bit, but she doesn't have any bad behaviors, she just wants to go fast. She's learning to wait for my audio and leg cues before moving from one gait to another and usually is pretty good about slowing down and stopping when I ask her. Every time we start out she takes a few minutes to settle down and realize she doesn't need to fight a bit that isn't there, but we have made some amazing progress in the last month and a half.

So much so that my trainer is finally ready to let me ride her on my own! This is huge. Part of the deal I made when I took her was the farm would comp my lessons until I was ready to ride her on my own, so they have a monetary incentive, but my trainer is extremely cautious and would not be doing this unless she felt we were both ready. She is not the easiest horse to ride, I was starting from scratch and she was coming off of a 3 year haitus, so I suppose that in the grand scheme of things one year doesn't seem like such a long time, but to me it seemed like an eternity. Especially since I had to watch other riders, who in my opinion were not as skilled as I was, ride their own horses while I had to be supervised.

I look forward to writing more often and catching up with all my bloggy friends. I haven't been ignoring you as much as just needing a break from the whole blogosphere. I'd love to hear what you've all been up to.

Update

Thank you to everyone who checked in on me and sent me good thoughts and wishes. I'm still in a place that is dark a lot of the time but I promise I will be back soon, at least with some pictures for you to look at while I figure out how to write again.