untitled personal narrative

I wrote this for my narrative class. We were supposed to write a "personal narrative." Vague, I know. This is what I came up with. I really need to go to another event so that I can stop writing about this same one over and over and over.

What's a good title? Other than the obvious "this is for you" thing.

***

It is exactly mid-day, the July sun is high in the sky and it is hot. I’ve already started sweating under my tee-shirt and protective vest. My horse, Sebastian, is sweating a little as well, although he hasn’t done more than canter a few laps of the warm-up ring and pop over a few low fences. He is supercharged with energy. He arches his copper-coloured neck, jigging on the spot. Foamy white saliva drips from his mouth as he gnaws on his bit; it sprays onto his chest when he impatiently tosses his head.

We are standing at the gate between the warm-up ring and cross-country field. I watch as a woman on a dappled grey horse tears out of the start box. The horse holds his head high in the air in defiance, so much that he can’t even see the first fence and is surprised by it when it presents itself in front of him. He comes scrambling to a halt, all four legs sliding across the grass. The obstacle is a palisades jump: sturdy, side-by-side vertical poles permanently affixed to the heavy base, a neat row of colourful flowers in front of it. She hollers, “GET!” in the growly voice that is so common on cross-country courses. The horse is athletic, if not a little crazy, and jumps the moderate-sized obstacle from a standstill.

I am surprisingly not nervous. I always used to be, never sleeping the night before a horse show, never being able to eat. I would walk around all morning with my stomach in knots, and I’d trot into the show ring with the tight clench of anxiety around my lungs. I’d always finish the ride dizzy from adrenaline and hunger. But today I’m calm, chatting with the tack-check girl about Sebastian and where I got him, watching the rider who is set to go on course before me pace the start box with her near-black horse. Sebastian, his chin practically on his chest and his feet in constant motion, seems more nervous than I am.

When the girl with the black horse takes off, the start box attendant waves us over. Sebastian breaks into a jog as we head over. We enter the start box, a small area fenced on three sides with an open front facing the first obstacle of the course. I turn him in a circle inside the small area, his clean, smooth summer coat gleaming. His four white stockings are spotless to match the bright white blaze that runs down the centre of his face. His forelock hangs neatly on his forehead. He has the thickest mane and tail of any horse I’ve ever known—just this morning I’d spent twenty minutes picking straw out of his long, dark brown tail. This horse habitually seeks out mud, manure and anything else sure to stain his white legs or become tangled in that luxurious tail.

Despite his pig-pen tendencies, Sebastian generally turns heads. First, because he is enormous. At least four inches taller at the shoulder than the average horse, he has feet the size of dinner plates and big, heavy-looking bones in his legs. He is wide in the chest, deep through the heartgirth and big-barrelled. Most who meet him tend to exclaim, “look at the size of that head!” But he has a large, kind, soft eye and a thick, fluffy forelock to offset his bulk. The other reason he is striking is because of his unusual colouring. He is mostly a solid chestnut—brighter red in the winter and the colour of a burnished penny in the summertime—but he has splashes of white here and there: one that paints a small section of his mane and continues briefly down his shoulder. A dollar-sized spot high up on either side of his neck, near his head. And his hind end looks like it has been drizzled with white paint that runs down into the stockings that cover his entire back legs. A woman I once rode with told me he reminded her of a caramel sundae. One friend loving calls him The Creamsicle.

As we shuffle around the start box, I am mentally reviewing the course in my head. First over the palisades, then down the slope to the log stack, sharp right turn to the coupe, then through the trees—better just trot through here—then over the v-shaped trakhener fence and out into the second field, which I can’t see from the start box. I visualize it instead, although I’m not too worried. So far Sebastian had been well-behaved. He hadn’t batted a lash at any of the stadium fences. Not even the one that had giant six-foot ladybugs looming on either side of it. Our dressage test lacked the finesse we once had, years ago, but I was mostly proud of just staying in the ring and not coming in last. I am proud that I’m even here at all.

It’s been over two years since she died. I haven’t competed with Sebastian since Tanya, my close friend, mentor and riding coach, passed away from cancer. This is a part of my life that haunts me daily: Tanya, what she meant to me, what my life means now that she’s gone and how I will ever move forward.

It took me a long time to be able to ride without a deep, socked-in sadness that seeped out of my heart through my entire body. In the first months I would try, but most often I would end each ride in frustrated tears, throwing Sebastian out in his pen without even a backward glance. I was bitter about having to do it without her. I felt sorry for myself. Mostly, I felt sad. It was an all-encompassing sadness that suffocated the enjoyment of everyday life. It kept me awake at night, silent tears rolling down my cheeks while I stared up at the ceiling in the dark trying to identify that physical sense of loss. As if a part of my own body was missing. If I managed to sleep, I would dream of her. I dreamt I was running: I ran all the way from where I lived out in the country to the hospital in the heart of the city, but I wasn’t tired, I just ran, frantically, desperately. When I got there, I ran up a long, dark stairwell, the sounds of my footsteps reverberating off the walls in a deafening racket. And when I finally reached her room, I found her sitting up in a bed in the very centre, looking at me like she’d been waiting for me. But she never said anything, and neither did I, because that’s where it always ended. My eyes would flutter open in the darkness, and I would put a hand over my mouth to stifle the sobs that made their way up my throat and past my lips. After those first few impossible months, I stopped trying to ride altogether.

Nine months later, I tried again. One day, I just felt ready, so I drove out to the barn and got on my horse bareback. It still took another year after that to be able to push aside the constant ache of missing her for the duration of each ride. I often cried while I drove home from the barn, but I didn’t let it stop me from coming out the next day. Then, one day while daydreaming at my office job, the thought that I should try to compete entered my mind. At first, I dismissed it, thinking that I wasn’t ready, or that I’d never be ready, but the idea eventually hooked into my brain. It had been so long since I’d even worn my show jacket, a beautiful charcoal grey Ariat coat that cost me a fortune and fit me just right. It had been so long since I’d taken Sebastian off the property. So long since I’d been anywhere with him without her. One day at the office, I printed off the entry form and mailed it along with my entrance fees.

I started to train harder, despite frightening thoughts like can I really do this without her? and what if it isn’t the same? I rode anyway. I took Sebastian on long, meandering hacks through the Albertan countryside to build fitness and stamina. I took dressage lessons from another instructor. I spent my evenings jumping courses in the outdoor arena until I lost daylight. I bathed and clipped my horse, loaded him onto a trailer and stepped foot on the ground of a show facility for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. I suppose it was a different life, now.

The start box attendant announces, “thirty seconds!” and I point Sebastian towards the opening. I steel my gaze on an imaginary point somewhere past the first obstacle. I jiggle my legs on Sebastian’s sides to perk him up and get his attention, an old start box trick Tanya had taught me. Sebastian quivers with pent-up energy; he is ready. When the attendant begins to count down from ten, I think about what were always Tanya’s final words of advice before we entered a show ring: “stay on, have fun!” When the attendant counts down from three to one, I think: this is for you.

We leap from the start box and the ground disappears beneath us. Sebastian seems to have fixed his gaze on some imaginary point beyond the palisades as well, because he jumps it without unhesitatingly. We gallop forward across the bright summer grass towards the next fence, and as I stare between Sebastian’s ears and feel the wind whipping past my own, I can feel my heart healing, if only a little.

Approaching the second obstacle, I smile. This is for you.