Horseback Riding Is Better Than Therapy, or Why Hobbies Are Important

Backstory

Not unlike many female children, I was once obsessed with horses. I’d go so far as to credit my horse obsession with getting me into fantasy, because after devouring serials like Pony Pals and Thoroughbred, the other books I saw with horses on the cover were fantasy novels. (Hello, Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey and Robert Jordan.)

I also had the luck to grow up in a rural area of Reno, Nevada. My mom’s house had the property for a horse, but no horse, and at least half of the houses on our street—our entire neighborhood—had horses or the dilapidated-barn remains marking them as former horse properties. I had friends who lived just about a mile away, and we were all pretty horse-obsessed. I don’t remember who got a horse first, but I don’t think it was me because my envy pushed me to compensate in other ways.

Summer may have had a horse before I did; I sincerely don’t remember. But I made her join my Pony Pals club, so joke’s on her. Also, she’s living and teaching in China for a year and writes an interesting blog about it.

What’s a horse-obsessed eight-year-old to do? Clearly, badger the shit out of her parents until they get her a pony. My first was named Comanche, a fuzzy, arthritic, gentle, and impossibly patient gelding. The first time I walked him on a halter, I tripped on a rock and fell directly into his path. He paused, unconcerned, and gave me a bemused nudge. The first time I rode him—saddle-less and with a makeshift halter-and-rope bridle—my dad backed him into a bramble pile to show me the importance of keeping my seat and wits about me while a-horseback. (Spoiler: I slid off the ass-end of my pony, who stopped immediately and started mowing the grass.)

Really Hot Beverages & Bead-Stringed Doorways

You know when you drink boiling hot coffee and burn the skin on the roof of your mouth, and then you eat something with a rough texture like Captain Crunch — in my case, almond cookies — and the burned skin is sloughed off? But not quite all the way, and the thinnest strip of skin is rubbing and bunching over the sensitivity of the fresh-revealed skin and no matter how hard you try, you cannot get that piece of old skin completely removed so that you can go back to chewing your food on the left side of your mouth, because goddamnit it doesn’t taste the same on the right side.

This what my life feels like right now. Also, the left side of the roof of my mouth.

I’m trying really hard to rip off the old skin and let the new stuff have its chance. The old could be any number of things: my old life in my hometown, my job, my insecurities about applying to grad school, my old sense of purpose and motivation which has heretofore failed me. The doubts that have always plagued me about pretty much everything.

Part of the problem is that I’m not quite sure what the new underneath is built upon. Or maybe I do know, and I’m not sure I like it.

Teague, I’m going to be here with you anyway

When I say “just a cat”, it’s not because I didn’t love him, didn’t think I would get over him, etc. I say it because I knew, eventually, I would get another cat. (Not only did I, but I barely waited two months.) When a parent loses a child, or vice versa, they don’t go out and replace that person. J.D.’s Scrubs daydreams aside, nowhere can someone find a new grandpa after theirs dies.

When all is said and done, I don’t feel as though I honored Teague enough. He was such a sassy kitten, but mellowed into the cuddliest adult with just a touch of that sauciness remaining. And haughtiness, too, in his way. I miss him especially because he was my particular cat. I love Xavier, but he’s still T.J.’s cat. And newbie Kaylee has a great personality and is cute as can be, and I would say she leans towards me more, but it’s not the same. It may be similar eventually, but no cat will be the same.