Being an Equestrian

Let’s talk about horse back riding. One of the most misunderstood sports on earth.
“It’s not a sport” they say.
“Does it even take muscle?” they ask.
“It takes skill but it doesn’t take strength” they assume.
If I could put every single human being that said one of these things on a well trained horse and ask them to be able to control it beautifully, elegantly, and still manage to take it over a 3 foot fence they’d be wishing they were dead.

“The horse does all the work” they state. No horse chooses to canter or gallop or even trot for heavens sake when there’s a human casually sitting on it’s back. If you let go of the reins you wanna’ know the first place my horse is going to go? The nearest food source. If food isn’t near by then she's going to paw the ground and slowly fall to the arena sand where she will take a nice roll. So that doesn’t make much sense does it… how do I control where she is going if it’s not with the reins? FREAKING GOD DAMN LEG MUSCLES HUN. That’s how. Legs. How do you slow down? That’s when abdominals and butt muscles come into play. Still don’t believe me? Then how can I ride my horse in a circle, cantering with no saddle, no bridle, and my hands in the air?

Video courtesy to Arielle Smith

I honestly have no idea how it came about that people think that controlling an animal that’s 10 times larger than you is easy. Since when has it been easy for some one to move something that weighs 1,000 plus pounds? That’s what I thought, never.

So everyone that still thinks that being an equestrian isn’t a sport, I have a question for you. Is soccer a sport?
Of course soccer is a sport! You run very fast and you have to have a lot of stamina and be a fast runner. But you also must have skill to get the soccer ball to go where you want it to go!
Okay, well take this from a girl that played soccer seriously and competitively for 8 years. I never once got as sore from playing soccer as I do riding. Soccer is in our comfort zone as human beings. When a mom puts her little kid on a soccer field they don’t know that they have it easy. Everyone gasps when the soccer ball hits a kid in the gut. But nobody ever died from a blow to the face from a ball. But when parents allow for their kids to sign up for riding lessons they sign a waver. The waver reads something along the lines of ‘you may not sue if your kid dies taking place in this activity.’ Then they watch as their kid gets on to an animal with a mind of its own. A beast.

Riding takes more energy, more muscle, more skill, than any other sport I have ever experienced, you just can’t even compare it to a sport as rigorous and riding.

The Golden Strands to my Not-so-Golden Past

I am cutting my hair today.
I am cutting away my past.
I am cutting it away.

I am cutting away the hair that the people that have left me touched. I am cutting away years and years of hair.
I am cutting it away.

I am cutting the ties that keep me together with my past.
I am cutting away my youth.
I am cutting it away.

I am cutting my hair today.
I am cutting away the hair that I love so much.
I am cutting it way.

I am cutting away something I am so emotionally attached to. I am cutting away 12 inches of hair. I am cutting away three people and three years. So don’t shame me for my choices. I am cutting my hair not for the look of it. I am cutting my hair to surrender in this fight to hold on to those who didn’t. These golden strands from my not so golden past. They will be someone else’s. Don’t shame me for how I’m going to look. You don’t understand what I’ve been through. I would scrape off my skin if I could. But not even my skin was there when the people I loved so much were. That skin has died and turned into the undesired dust on my little dark oak coffee table. It was swept away, but my hair, it is very much still here. The hair my papa used to stroke. The hair that my friend used to braid. It’s still here. And so am I. And here I plan to stay. No matter how much I hate it, no matter how much I want to leave, I will stay. But my hair will not. I want it to be given to someone who needs it. And I don’t need it. I want to need it.
I need it to be given away.
But I want it to stay.

I am giving away my hair today.
I am giving away my past.
I am giving it away.

No matter how much I want it to stay,
I am giving it away.

Please know that I love you with all of my heart,
but no matter how much I want to need you to stay,
I need you to go;
I need you to go with peace

I am giving away my hair today.
I am giving away my past.
I am giving it away.

168 Hours in a Week

“You’re lazy.”
“You don’t work hard.”
“You think the world revolves around you.”
“You get all of what you have handed to you.”
“You get good grades because of the school that you go to.”
“You ride horses? You must be rich.”
“You’re a selfish little bitch.”
This pretty much sums up what people think of me. This sums up what I hear every week, or even every day. It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me cry. It makes me feel unappreciated. It has caused me to have depression, at the youngest of ages.

I first experienced depression in sixth grade when people told me “You’re so skinny, you’re going to die.” Or they would ask me “Are you anorexic?” or “Do your parents feed you?” Nearly every day I would go home crying my eyes out because people would bully me about how much I weighed. I began to develop clinical migraines from the amount of stress that I was experiencing.

In seventh grade it only went downhill. First my grandpa died, he was the closest family member I had after my parents and his death rattled me. I never let myself grieve his death. I forced myself to forget that he even ever existed. This wasn’t by choice, it was because at the time I was already emotionally unstable, and I wasn’t about to let myself fall into the deep pit of grief that I knew was awaiting me. But this did not fix my depression, and next my very best friend left me the summer after seventh grade. She went from FaceTiming me for hours at a time each day to not ever texting me back. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, all I knew was that another huge people figure in my life was gone.

In eighth grade I developed what I called separation anxiety. When I felt alone, too alone, I would have an anxiety attack that would begin with me feeling nauseous, then shaking, then full out balling, rocking back and forth on my tailbone as my whole body shook like an earth quake. I got migraines every one to two weeks, and school didn’t help.

I forced myself to forget about all of this, just like I forced myself to forget my papa (grandpa). But it all came back the other day when I was with my friend. We were talking about the sadder aspects in our lives when it all came rolling back into my brain. How hurt I really am, how messed up I really am, how bad my depression actually was and still may be. But I got so goddamned good at hiding it from others that I could hide it from myself too. I had ignored it, shoved it into the very back of my thoughts, but it was still there. School gives me no time to handle my own personal needs. I have no time to have a mental health day. I have no time to waste crying over what my life actually is because I spend approximately 40 hours at school, 21 hours on homework, 12 hours at the barn, 10 hours eating, 56 hours sleeping, 2 hours showering, 5 hours getting ready for school, and 4 hours on the bus every single week. Do you know how many hours are in a week? 168 hours. Do you know how many hours those numbers add up to? 168. This is how I spend my weeks. Do I have enough time to be stressed? To take a minute to just focus on breathing? No. So am I lazy? Is using every single hour of your week that you can for productive purposes what you call lazy?

My cat being adorably lazy, as always.

To the Unwanted, Unappreciated, Unknown Teenagers Alike

For this blog assignment, we were asked to write about our ideal reader, or who we are writing to when we write these posts. “It has to be a person that is famous in their field” reads the rubric. But I do not write for a person that is famous, and I do not write for a person that is professional in what they pursue. I write for teenagers alike to me. I write for the people that aren’t anything special to our society. I write to you because I’m one of you, and I understand what it feels like to be unwanted, to be unappreciated, to be unknown. So if I am given an F on this assignment, I will take full responsibility without regret, because I will not bullshit my way through this assignment, and write to you about someone I don't even care about, to get an A on my report card. So here it goes.

To the unwanted, unappreciated, unknown teenagers alike,
I admire you for putting up with the hell thrown on your shoulders. I admire you for having to listen instead of speak for the first decade or more of your life. But I admire you more if you have found your voice. And I admire you even more if you have found your place and stuck your feet in the ground. But I admire you if you are lost just as well. I admire you for always having to care more about your future than what is happening right now. And I admire you for being so strong when others think you are weak. I admire you for not letting yourself fall when people push you down. I admire you for showing up for school even when you are sad. I admire you for having to deal with adults and often times being expected to be one.

Don’t stop being a kid to be an adult. Please live out your childhood. And don’t let yourself think that you have to be famous or professional (basically and adult) to be appreciated. Because I appreciate you more than I do adults.

I feel that we shouldn't be expected to admire someone for their superiority. I don’t look up to famous people for being famous. I look up to people that really deserve it, I look up to people that matter because they work hard every single day to get to where they are. Teenagers don't stop working off their place in the world, famous people have their whole pretty lives in safe hands. And when us ordinary teenagers age, maybe we will be famous, and maybe we will professional, but we will be adults by then, therefore most of the blood, sweat, and tears will be left in our teenage years. I admire the teenagers that work their asses off even when no one believes in them. Even when no one appreciates it. Even when it goes unnoticed.

So let it be if I fail this assignment. Because it was worth it to tell you the truth.

Photo Courtesy: Stability

Suicide is a Permanent Solution to Temporary Problem

Suicide. It’s a term that parents refrain their kids from knowing about. It is shamed upon. We run away from it; we don’t understand it. But it’s time to talk about it. I have a dear friend that has struggled with this. His brother attempted in sixth grade by overdosing on Ibuprofen, luckily he was found and saved. But, did he want to be saved? Was he okay with the thought of his slow and painful death when he was sitting on the cold bathroom floor, weak and unable to change his mind if he wanted to? Or had he accepted the fact that he was about to leave Earth, never to be seen alive again? My friend’s next two encounters were his own, he followed his little brother’s lead and swallowed a whole bottle of Advil. One-by-one they went down his throat.

Somewhere around this time, he ran away. I was worried sick, I didn’t know where he was, or if he was okay, or if I would ever see him again. First it was unreal to think that one of my very best friends had left me without saying goodbye. I was so stressed out that I failed a math quiz. That was my first reaction. Then a couple days later, I found myself teary-faced staring at my boat where most of our camping adventures took place, and then my jeep trailer where we would hide out from all of the Ashtyn-obsessed children that camped with us in Moab. He was a friend different from all others, he was the friend that I only ever saw in my happy places; Moab, Jordanelle Reservoir, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir. We were all happy there, no problems, only good times, boat rides, jeep trailing, and campfires. It was a surreal place with dreamy memories, no one was ever not happy there. And that’s how I remembered him, I never realized how serious his depression was until he was gone. But he wasn’t gone forever, he came back about 30 minutes after my breakdown.

A lot of people mistake my care for him as me “liking” him as more than a friend. But this isn’t the case. I care about him because he is my best camping buddy, he is my friend, he is my brother that I never had. And to hear that he hates life, that he doesn’t really want to be here, it kills me. But on January 1st, 2016 during our hour and a half long conversation at 6 in the morning he told me something about suicide that changed his mind. He said “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” That quote reversed his thinking. That quote save his life. And I will always respect those words for saving my camping buddy from choosing death over life.

"No Violence Statue"

Photo Courtesy: Prospect

The Fault in Your Birthday Cake Candles

When I was little my dad used to say “you’re growing like a weed, goose” and “maybe if I stop feeding you, you’ll stop growing.” I would always react by angrily telling him that he was dumb because I would die if he stopped feeding me and at the time I didn't think that weeds were pretty so I’d tell him that I grew like a flower. But standing here as a freshman who spends most of her time with a junior and some fellow freshman students, I regret how I treated my childhood. All kids want to do is get older and older, they count each and every candle on their cake just to make sure it is just as many as their new age. Those very candles burned out my creativity. Now you can picture yourself, all dressed up perched on your chair, eyes focused and reflecting the small buds of fire melting undesired wax onto your frosting, eagerly waiting for the untuned singing voices to stop. All for what? To blow out those damn candles. To be able to say “I’m six” instead of “I’m almost six.”

Truth is, I would do a lot of things to be almost six again. I would do a lot to go back to the time that I didn’t know what dirty jokes were so I could speak freely without the worry that people would laugh because what ever I said relates to sex some how. But no, I’m stuck here for a little while. I’m stuck seeing people that I love want, and try, to commit suicide. I’m stuck seeing the people that I love cut. I’m stuck here seeing the people that I love drown in their own goddamn tears. I’m stuck here seeing people I love burn in the extra fire those new candles provide because they just can’t blow them out anymore. I’m stuck here. And I’m sick of it.

The ironic thing is, no matter how much I hate those candles, I still look forward to them. I still have hope that they’ll bring me to a better place. That it’ll be better when I’m fifteen. They are a drug. The glory of age is a drug. It makes it hard to stay centered in your life. Its magnetic force pulls me so hard that I have to remind myself that the things I am touching and the objects surrounding me are real. My mind is so busy I forget to “stay real.” I’m so content thriving in my thoughts that I can’t focus at what I’m doing at that actual moment. I work in auto pilot most of the time, so used to my life, so bored, that I keep myself entertained in a separate dimension while I nearly unconsciously do what ever it is that I am supposed to be doing. This is why if you were to ask me to describe what I did yesterday I wouldn’t be able to tell you without struggling to remember what I actually physically did yesterday. I’m constantly trying to escape the now by time traveling into the future. So theoretically, I’m constantly trying to escape my current age, by day dreaming about the next cake full of candles I get to see.

Photo Courtesy: my mom, Kristin (yes, that is me)

Sawyer and Service Dogs

I know a family that has a four year old boy that can not walk named Sawyer. Sawyer has a disability called CP Cerebral Palsy that holds him back physically. He has the ability to speak, but at four years old and seeing his older sister run a round for his whole life, he has a yearning to be as physically capable as the children around his age. He has recently been offered an amazing gift that would change the course of his life forever. A 40 grand gift to be exact, called a service dog.

With the dog comes a best friend, a family member, and an inspiration that would turn him into “the kid that has a cool dog” instead of “the kid that has a wheelchair.” Dogs have a way of understanding the human mind better than we ourselves do. They decode every emotion we let off, every movement we take, every signal our brains let off and react accordingly. Dogs know when we are sad before we even shed a tear. Dogs can pick up signals of stress and anger. They can even detect a health problem in a human before the human them self.

I own a 8 year old, purebred but unpapered, golden retriever. She is my best friend above all. Until about two years ago she was just the typical dog that knows basic commands such as sit and stay. I then developed an interest in horse jumping and not owning a horse or knowing where to take lessons, I trained my dog to jump instead. Over the course of two years-worth of training, she’ll jump three foot with only a flick of my hand as a cue. No treats to bribe her. No leash to force her. Only trust and an amazing relationship between dog and human. The most amazing concept about it in my eyes, is that I know she would do just about anything I asked her to do. I know for fact, that she would jump on three legs if I asked her to.

There was a time that I wasn’t doing too well. I found myself feeling that almost everyone that I loved and cared for was leaving. I was separated from seven people both permanently and temporarily. I began to develop what I like to call a condition of separation anxiety that affected me in extreme ways. I had a migraine from every other week to once a week for about two months. I would have near-sleepless nights where I would just sit there, rocking myself back and forth crying unstoppably. I truly believe that what made me hold on the most, was the relationship I had with my dog. The reality of how much my existence meant to her, made me feel all that much more loved. She may only be a small part of my life, one being out of the thousands that I’ll meet, but to her, my dad and I are her entire life.

When I was only seven or eight years old, I jumped in the way of a trailer that was about to run over my dog. This was before I had even had her for a very long time, before a relationship as strong as the one we has now was formed. And I risked my life without thinking twice to save that of my dog’s. Even though neither of us were hurt, it wasn’t the most “fun” experience for me. It traumatized me, but I would do it again.

The family that I was talking about earlier is still considering whether or not they should take the responsibility of a service dog. It is a lot of work to own a dog and just in general they are a large responsibility but a service dog is much more. Wherever you go with your special needs child, the dog goes too. There’s no leaving the dog home or taking him to doggy-daycare. He or she has to be with you 24/7. I understand why they would see this as a problem, but they have already made the decision to take on a special needs child (they did not panic and put him into the adoption system like some people would) they made the life long commitment to keeping him happy and to provide all he will ever need. So in my opinion, why not excel in that commitment, make their son’s life change in ways that nothing else besides a dog would be able to do. When Sawyer goes through a rough patch, which like any kid, he most definitely will, he may not know how to communicate it to his parents. But this dog would be able to register what was happening without Sawyer even trying to tell him or her. I know very well how it feels, to have somebody care more about me than themselves, and I can only hope that my dog knows how much I love her. I love her like I love my mom and dad. I love her more than my life itself. I love her in a way I will never love anyone else. And this love is life saving. This love keeps me breathing. This love drives me safely through the hell that our world can cause. This love keeps my feet on the ground. This love is invincible, it would keep any kid, in any condition, a happy one, guaranteed. This love is better than any human love will ever be. This love is a love I will always chose before any other. This love, is a dog’s love.

This photo was taken by me in Moab, September of 2015.