I always wanted to ride when I was a kid. But being an Army family, there was no way to get a horse and move that horse around the world with us. So I never rode except on vacations where my nagging surpassed my parent’s frugality on vacation excursions. But I have always loved horses.
Of course, I have a daughter who started begging for a horse at 2. She started riding at 4 and is still doing it today and is entering competition levels and working her way up. She and her horse are amazing to watch together. The relationship between her and Odin and Eclipse (our now retired horse) is truly amazing and something to behold.
I envy it if I am honest. That intimacy with an animal that could kill you or paralyze you...it is an amazing heart connection. And I feel right now like I could really use a good heart connection.
I have seen my daughter filled with sadness and grief over the trials and tribulations of growing up, run to the stables and throw her arms around her horse's neck, and sob. The horse seeming to understand with no words uttered. Just a infinite intimacy stretching out in all directions.
And while I want that, I know that I do not have this or several other kinds of intimacy because I would rather be alone and I am not willing to put the time in with the horse, or other beings to engage in relationships at this level. It isn’t that I don’t want to, it is just that when it comes down to it, it is just easier to be alone. And if I am really honest, less terrifying.
I have this weird relationship with relationships. I mean I want them and I need them in my life but there always seems to be a tipping point for me where either I or the other person becomes too involved and then it feels like one of us loses ourselves in the other. And I don’t like the way that feels going either way. I don’t like to be needed too much and I don’t like needing too much. And so, even in equine relationships I have this tendency to sit them out.
I admire my daughter’s ability to give of herself day after day. To evolve with this other being instead of adjacent to It. Her growing up and older, coincides and is intricately intertwined with that of her friends and horses. Also our cats but that is a different blog, for another day. I long for the kind of blending I see her do with our horses. But I hold back and away, always holding myself off from fully committing. And while I can give you a lot of reasons why (which would all be legitimate reasons) I feel also like they land in excuseland with no real reasons except I am afraid.
Intimacy, true, connected, real intimacy scares the fuck out of me. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to be vulnerable AND present. I don’t know how to let you in and not feel like my entire world is being taken over. I struggle. And I vacillate between not wanting to be involved in any relationships whatsoever and feeling acutely lonely and isolated.
I know, I know, it is self imposed. And still, I feel torn apart by conditions of my own making...
I am arriving at a place in my life where I am not sure I can do any of it differently. I sustain the relationships I can, poorly sometimes with avoidance still topping my hit list for ways to deal with human beings and apparently horses. I want to give myself over but there is always something that holds me back. I know, it is me, it is me that holds me back. And the only congruence I can find within my own soul is that I have no congruence currently. I am, in a word, conflicted.
So when I find myself in places such as this (and I do find myself in places such as this, often) I up my appreciation for people like my daughter who seem to be unconflicted about things like this. I can marvel and awe over her ability to throw herself intimately and whole heartedly into a relationship, a friendship with a horse or person.
I think what I am realizing in my life is that sometimes you don’t have to be able to do the things yourself in order to appreciate them fully. Sometimes, when I sit on the outside and look in, I participate to the depth of my being even though I am barely involved. And while that may be lacking and shortsighted from another person’s perspective, it is still my level of engagement and that is as honest and authentic as I can be.
I have to honor in myself all the things that have happened to bring me to where I am in this life. All the traumas I have endured and survived. And the far reaching tentacles that cause my behavior to be warped and twisted still. I don’t believe that any of the past offer much of an excuse for current shitty behavior, but I do find it a helpful reference point for why I am the way I am. And an impetus for change. I do not want the past to dictate all the terms of my life. Ever. So I must work diligently to uncover the truths that I hide even from myself....
Again...still.
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