Hello one and all, welcome to the New Year, 2021, which most Americans probably used to facilitate the spread of a family of highly mutable viruses and we just want to pop champagne and forget that we’re permitting global decimation and bioterrorism in the name of “Celebration”.
VERY, VERY American thing to do, if you ask me.
I love the USA, too, guys. I was just raised by a colonel in the US army who fought in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. Experienced the beautiful skirting of the Geneva Convention that was Agent Orange in the name of “Democracy”. He went to / taught at West Point Military academy as well as achieving the status of a “Knight of the Italian Republic” while at the Italian War Army College. My grandpa spent his entire later years devoted to endlessly researching everything he was taught. Our farm land, once lived on by the Zekiah Tribe, he used to regrow the Appaloosa horse population. Every time we plowed those tobacco fields, he unearthed arrowheads and other signs of civilized life (you know, from before mass organization by the federal government of rehoming/virally murdering entire populations) and built a historical trust to relearn and re-educate the people. Specifically from a non-white and solely pro-USA viewpoint.
In fact, he went through this huge phase where he bought $2 million worth of stone from a company going out of business and hired my uncle’s construction company to build patios, roads, whatever we wanted (I asked for a castle, unfortunately I did not get it). When he learned the swastika had been used for hundreds of years by the Hindu and Buddhist faiths, amongst others and was a symbol of “good luck” prior to Hitler’s pathetic cultural appropriation 101, he built several stone sauwastika’s all over our farm. He enjoyed the idea that people would be confused, ask him, and he could explain. In a “reclaiming the tradition” type thing. All this ACTUALLY did was make people think we were Nazis.
…You’d think someone who was a rooftop watcher during the Blitz in London would’ve thought about that.
I believe true “patriotism” means always wanting your country to be the best version of itself.
If this is what you all think is the “best” version of the USA? A country so focused on individualism and personal achievement that we don’t care when those people are assholes climbing out of the pits of their despair by stepping on the heads of those around them, versus working Patcha and Kuzco style to propel each other out of the pit? Do fucking better. You might not always know “right” from “Wrong” but you DO know when something ISN’T “right”. Stop defending the 100 different failed ways you tried to design a lightbulb and how about we work towards achieving the way that’ll work most efficiently and pragmatically, while also being environmentally friendly. How about that?
Anyways, weird intro. You all should expect that by now.
While this is very meta-, (I think that’s the word) talking directly to you, I also want to give a special shout out to my listeners or readers in Germany and the United Kingdom. Let’s all have a moment of peace for the people who come across this and think it is representative of the average “American” woman. While I may have matched my Kirsten the American Girl Doll and gone to one room schoolhouses in full cosplay, I have since accepted it is my purpose on this earth to wreak havoc to all of the indoctrinated beliefs we once held near and dear. It is how I channel my frustration at the lack of accountability or acknowledgment for the mass casualty events occurring daily with seemingly no awareness for the weapon of biochemical warfare that is the coronavirus. Do you all not think the wealthy leaders globally discuss population control behind closed doors? How do you enjoy being so naive to it?
The topic of today’s post is one near and dear to my heart, as a horse girl, and it’s that I don’t actually believe horse girls are crazy, I just think they are connected to the circle of life, nature in general, and emotions more so than the average mind-numbingly dull American person who has blindly agreed to not express completely reasonable thoughts or feelings in an attempt to be more socially acceptable, lest they be labeled as “Dramatic” by those with lesser minds.
I am going to weave you a tale involving a brief synopsis of my youth and random anecdotes that my ADHD riddled brain decides are particularly important and relevant. You understood how it related after Elle Woods brought up ammonium thioglycolate and how it impacted the texture of the perm, so just bear in mind that even if my musings don’t immediately appear to be relevant, they are. Also, this is my show and it’s my thoughts so TECHNICALLY, everything is relevant no matter how divergent it may appear.
Growing up on a farm isn’t something that I reference on my resume, though I arguably should. Anytime someone finds that out, they say it’s clearly reflected in my work ethic, which is just “normal” for me, because if you’re going to do a job, you better do it “right”. However, the scientist in me also uses every opportunity for improvement as I see fit, so clearly this does impact how much I enjoy incompetent leadership resistant to change. My grandparents started our family farm, where my house, my grandparent’s, aunt’s, and uncle’s were all on their own 4 individual acres. Then, the roughly 70 acres of sprawling farm, rolling hills, and swamp or wooded terrain extended behind my grandparent’s home into what was called “The Valley”. My grandfather bought my grandma “Two Spot”, the Appaloosa who began the breeding registry and eventually we had anywhere from 20-30 horses at a given time.
We also got the farm because my mom was born in Italy about 15 years after her three older siblings. She was a “mistake”. “Mistake” holds such negative connotation too. She was “unplanned”. It’s not that she wasn’t WANTED, she just was a “surprise” is all. So when she was born, my grandparents moved back stateside from Italy and thus birthed the farm she’s grown up on her ENTIRE life. She went away to college, found a husband, brought him home, and stayed there until moving to the farm my stepdad owns.
While I was growing up and competing, we usually kept about 7-10, including some of our boarder’s horses. Now that we’ve moved to my stepfather’s farm, with my mom shedding the weight of divorce to a narcissist, we’re down to 2-3 at any given time. My mom obviously no longer has child labor to feed them, clean the stalls, bail hay, etc that we provided in our youth so she has to take care of them singlehandedly. The smaller amount is significantly more manageable. In fact, my (mom’s) new horse just came in from Florida last night around midnight, which puts us back up at 3 for the time being, since my childhood pony passed last month.
Now, I WILL acknowledge, there are different types of horse people, but that’s a follow-up discussion. The overarching “horse” person, or equestrian, is someone who is connected to an animal that is generally physically larger than them, requires potentially a 30+ year commitment, is EXPENSIVE as fuck. And no, I do not use my horses in the “resell as an investment”, although we have at times when they weren’t a good enough “fit”.
Horses are similar to a “the wand chooses the wizard” Harry Potter moment.
A good equestrian can ride many, and bond with many, but they still have their predominant favorites. Every so often, you get one that connects with you spiritually in a James Cameron’s Avatar style of spiritual understanding. Sandy was my spirit. Before her, it was my pony Nicky. Now? Who knows. I’m back in the market for animal menagerie for my personal zoo collection of creatures that understand why I walk the earth.
I grew up riding my pony through the woods–solo at times, but mainly with my other horse friend who lived up the street at her Grandparents’ house. Lindsay’s pony, Brandy, was white and larger than Sandy, but the two mares loved keeping each other company. We would go out for 8-10 hours during the summer–wandering the power lines as far as we could, looking at the houses in the front of the neighborhood, encountering deer in the woods behind our hay fields. We swam the ponies in the pond I grew up swimming in. Sandy even dipped her head fully underwater–a rarity for horses to enjoy getting their ears wet. We took off our saddles and rode bareback, jumping 3’6” posts with ease on ponies smaller than the jumps. When Lord of the Rings came out and the hobbits had to embark on their long journey, I was like “finally! Representation of who I am in pop culture!”
If my future partner does not propose to me in New Zealand as if it is the one ring forged from the depths of Mordor that I deserve, I will not marry them, simple as that.
I spent most of my free time in the saddle. Who wouldn’t? I had my own ponies, pretty much as many as I could want or need because my grandparents would buy them for me if I wanted to try a different outlet. Maryland is beautiful and the colors of the leaves, changing with each season, coupled with the farmland and seclusion from the dredges of humanity reflected in the crystal oasis of the pond, framed by lily pads, was the epitome of a dream. I had an amazing childhood. And yes, I still say that even with some of my other references to my familial life. My life has been undeniably free, reckless, passionate, wild. I race with the spirit of the wind around me, winding through the trails like Pocahontas. I ran a 5k race in my heptathlon for pony club–which I qualified for Nationals with and won my division the first time I ever tried–barefoot. Because “it felt better”. My feet, hands, and body have been immersed in the earth, it is more natural for me to be outside, to be amongst animals, to be amongst trees. I feel as if I belong.
Anyone who studies animals to a degree probably understands the mentality of “horse people”. The horses were our methods of transportation. Is it also completely logical and probable that we have a horse farm in the off chance we need to escape on horseback from something and gasoline has been rendered obsolete? Yes. Speaking of all things gasoline, crazy how Trump has rolled back so many environmental protection laws, pardoned war criminals who paid for his own personal business, and sold bombs to Saudia Arabia. Yet, that’s somehow not front page news. Why are you all not more concerned about this? When you said you wanted a “change of pace” and “businessman” I did not think the Godfather was who fucking came to mind?
“It’s just business”… NO, it’s people’s lives, Eric.
Horses are working animals. They carry you. They’ve carried people into battle. They’ve carried wagons across mountains to move our civilizations westward. They carry the plows across the fields to allow agricultural expansion and “greater society”. When you combine that with a personality of someone who wants to work, to perform for you, you get a magnificent creature that taps into a new level of humanity.
Humans are, ultimately, animals. We can plead all we want with the fact that we’re so “different” because of our special thumbs, but we have always only made sense of the world around us with our own perceptions. Which means we only explain things in ways we know how. It’s why our languages are expanding, constantly fluid. It’s why the invention of the internet and dispersion of education disrupted the fabric of the GOP and general political system in the USA’s ability to control public perception. Humans anthropomorphize everything such that we’ve convinced ourselves humanity is somehow different from the other mammals that roam this planet. That we DESERVE to have a stronger foothold, to ignore the species we live amongst and move them at our whim, using them almost exclusively for personal gain, because we have physically harnessed ways to be stronger than them. Ways to destroy their environments. Ways to force them into starvation, seclusion, and loneliness.
And Americans are the fucking worst.
We have veterans who will open “animal rescues” and exhibit wild, exotic species to the public for profit as if they are doing the animals a favor, but won’t work or devote any time to volunteering in homeless shelters–also overrun with veterans treated like wild, exotic animals. We rescind environmental protective orders and mobilize Native American land as if we should be entitled to destroying the earth on one side of our country for the sake of “development” on the opposite coast–without a care for those actually affected by the degradation. We permit SeaWorld to profit even after Blackfish, in the name of “science” even though we should be directing funding into EVERYTHING science related for the sake of curiosity, knowledge of the world around us, and how to rectify the horrendous things we have done to this planet. Anyone who wants to study this world should be able to and be able to live comfortably and should know how to make that a reality. Why the fuck do so many people want to come out with new swimsuit lines that aren’t sustainable, paying American workers a living wage, or using recyclable plastic? There is SO much engineering opportunity within every single industry in the USA and our government somehow won’t encourage the American youth to be more conscientious, to seek out studying the planet? Instead, we let killer whales live in a shoebox, biting themselves and injuring themselves in desperate bids for freedom. Great white sharks can’t even live in captivity, they’d rather commit suicide and just stop swimming.
Yet we really think we’re doing a favor to the world by putting animals on display in conditions like that? We have technology at our fingertips. People don’t need to be “attracted” to these rescues, studies, or parks any longer. We should be creating dramatic documentaries of what it means to actually work with these animals,
a little less “Tiger King” and a little more “Steve Irwin”
… in fun ways so people can learn about them from afar, and understand WHY we should be respecting the natural environment.
Say you’re into trail running (which I also am). In the middle of the mountains, on a trail winding through rock faces and pine trees, your man made inventions may not matter. Your gun is good, sure, but is it enough? Your bear mace may fall out, inaccessible, or your fingers may fumble at the latch. You may slip on a root covered in an aqueous layer of moss, tumble off the path, break your collarbone again, and die, alone, away from humanity. Horse people are similar. TRUE horse people–people who actually know how and can care for their own horses, are identical, only connected to an animal that could easily kill them, purposely or accidentally. (By the way, “true horse people” does not refer to the rich city girls who take lessons and pay for horses already well-trained. You can buy your connection to solitude, you can’t buy understanding it. Your racehorse means nothing to me when you’re scared to ride it but thanks for funding it I guess? What a sad life to live collecting everything without regard to its soul. A hollow shell of a life for a hollow shell of a human in too many instances.)
Some people would argue what kind of “sane” person would get on a creature that could kill them and place their trust in it, fully, to not do so? A lot of those people also drive a speeding metal box on wheels at tremendous speeds amongst other people also driving speeding metal boxes on wheels at tremendous speeds and entrust those people, whose languages they might not speak, to not kill them as well, so…
The wild is scary. It is intense. It requires a level of awareness, of perception, of clarity. Acknowledgment of humanity’s place on this Earth. Actual “horse girls” are connected to the brevity of life. They’ve probably been thrown from their horse, alone and forced to walk miles back dejectedly, while their horse gallavants around running in circles back at the stables, more times than they can count. They’ve probably made several emergency room visits for “protocol” even though the medics will just reaffirm we bandaged everything correctly and “nothing else appears to be the problem”. That, or they’ll tell us what we already knew by my sister’s 2 week memory loss, that “it’s a concussion”. (Seriously, it was on her birthday and my mom was worried we’d have to re-wrap all of her presents…) City slickers may never understand that. People who confine themselves to the architectural safety of engineering are either not engineers themselves (who would NEVER trust everything fully) or they are unaware of their connection to the primal drive of humanity to explore the unknown and interact with the natural world around you. I honestly view those people sadly.
It must be hard to have always grown up in the confines of a concrete jungle. The biggest threat to your safety wasn’t the random coyote or wolf sightings on your farm, the snakes that would lose their hold and fall from the rafters into your arms while you were scooping feed, the possibility of taking a hoof to the head while breaking our colt, Finnegan, like my Grandfather once had. Never having to REALLY provide for yourself or rather not even knowing how to. Only studying the way the world works from books or movies. Secondhand. Your version of a day’s work never breaking a sweat, outside of fitness class, most minutes planned around someone (likely someone else’s) schedule over your own.
Basic rules of thermodynamics involve the knowledge that spontaneity is predisposed to increase. Chaos is a ladder, remember? (Shout out Peter Baelish–go listen to/read my Game of Thrones post).
You can logic through life all you want, but there will always be unpredictable things sent to wreak havoc and create chaos in the timeline we’re familiar with. Why would you want the only animals you interact with to be humans? Have you met other animals? Some of them are really cool and won’t pass off their unsolicited opinions on what female dolphins should or should not do with their bodies while you observe them in admiration.
All I’m saying is that, no matter how smart Elon Musk is, the very fact that he isn’t TERRIFIED by the reality of what awaits us in space, when we can’t even fathom the ways that dogs SMELL, is fearful. Men are so fucking one-track minded sometimes, I swear. We arbitrarily ascert there “isn’t intelligent life in the universe” but only look at “life” in humanoid representations that operate on the same chemical scales we operate on. It’s a lack of imagination, truly.
Actual horse people aren’t afraid of getting messy, either. First, farms don’t exactly smell pleasant. My sister probably got teased at some point in school by her prissy bitch friends who were jealous, because she used to HATE feeding the horses in the morning and would spray all of this Victoria’s Secret body spray on immediately upon getting back into the car. Don’t get me wrong–Cotton candy delight is a tasty surprise, but I honestly don’t understand why some people hate it. Do you just hate the earth? Are you scared of nature in general? Please tell me why you expect life to not have a wide array of scents? Not all of them will be pleasant. We don’t necessarily need to acknowledge them, apart to characterize their identities and ensure no inhalation of toxic sludge detrimental to our survival. Maybe it’s also because I’m an athlete, so I’ve always been CELEBRATED at my sweatiest, messiest, and dirtiest, but it doesn’t phase me. All it tells me, if you complain, is that your life has been so cushy that you are literally not used to displeasant AROMAS. And to that, I say, grow the fuck up. Grow the fuck up. You can’t sit there and want to do anal and not consider that aspect. Do you know most women shit themselves when they give birth? Which, for women, by the way, childbirth and pregnancy in general is one of the MOST DANGEROUS times to be a woman, so you better DAMN SURE be next to that fucking bed. I don’t give a fuck how “unbecoming” it is to sit there and see your wife in pain. That is accountability 101. It is YOUR fucking fault. YOU caused that. You better be next to her for that. And the women who don’t want their husbands to see them like that? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK A LIFE PARTNER IS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE FOR?! Get that internalized misogyny out of here. I have HAD it with society. …If you’re allergic, I get it and fully apologize.
It also wasn’t until college that I realized it was weird in any capacity to be a “horse girl.” Coming from a rural, farming area, a LOT of people are either into 4H or pony club. My mom and aunt get to judge the public speaking for 4H and animal shows–basically which horse, cow, or sheep’s hindquarters and chest ratio are exquisite marks of the breed. It’s eugenics and the Westminster Dog Show for country folk. Like I said, my mom was once Queen Nicotina, the queen of the county fair, named after the tobacco plant. No, I’m not kidding. Nor do I wish I was, it’s been quite the adventure of a lifetime.
I also, being a HUGE nerd and top of my class with perfect straight A’s, athletic excellence in any sport, and a thirst for knowledge that made me want to read constantly and prefer my quiet solitude over team atmospheres, never doubted myself. I was bullied SIGNIFICANTLY, but I honestly didn’t give a fuck about the opinions. Did I wish people would leave me the fuck alone and mind their business? Absolutely. Did they have ponies? No. Thus, the point of their jealousy. I had every tangible method of asserting I was “better” than them in ways that actually mattered to me–character most of all. (As I say during this most humble statement.) People bully you as a result of their own inadequacies. Some people do it because the people in their lives, the ones who are supposed to show them unconditional love, think putting someone down for the things that bring them joy when they’re harmless is somehow “playful teasing”. If that’s how you choose your time to interact with this world, I honestly just feel bad for you because it shows me you want to take however little time you have on this planet and negatively influence it.
However, I was still conscientious when I had to wear my riding clothes to middle school. The boots were much more eye-drawing, clattering across the hall than my normal sneakers. I never much had an eye for fashion–it neither interested me nor was it practical, as I was always in a different uniform or on the move as is, so my riding apparel was a stark contrast from my usual attire and made me stand out in a way I didn’t enjoy. My mom was going to pick us up early, instead of us riding the bus that day, so we could make it to our lessons in Virginia. I know it may be “surprising” to people who see the confidence in my thirst trap of an instagram and take it to mean I’m a gigantic narcissist so full of herself, but I do not “enjoy” the spotlight. I am aware that being illuminated in a spotlight only means there are shadows hidden in the depths of the darkness around you. Our planet is a good reminder of the cyclical nature of lightness and darkness. A good ole yin and yang. You do not have one without the other. With enough time, even the darkest nights pass. Stay in the spotlight long enough, and your flaws become illuminated as the makeup caked on begins to melt with the transfer of heat. I do not wish for it. Like being extroverted, it is simply a facet of reality and living amongst “society” as who I am. I hopefully share more of the darkness with you all, so you may understand it does not come easily. That I make no false assumptions of “perfection”, but I do see inherent flaws in our current societal structure and have all of the tools at my disposal and cannot silently watch as they perpetuate. I wish to make the most out of my time on this earth, however that may be in each and every moment.
Truth be told, by high school I wasn’t competing as much. By my sophomore year, travel soccer predominated. Most of my fellow horse friends were homeschooled by high school–it made sense for the traveling and time commitment. Most of them have horses involved in their professions, now, though. If I had been more serious about equestrian things, I might’ve taken that route. However, my love of pushing my own body physically predominated over my desire to push another’s, and team sports looked better on college resumes. It was also easier for my father to showcase his genetic dominance over others within the community.
In middle school, when my mom started working again and my parents realized they had never really liked each other and my biological sperm donor of a father was never interested in a “partner”, he was interested in a house wife who did all the work for him to do the “fun stuff”, it became more and more apparent that divorce was inevitable. He had never been involved in my horse events, to be fair, nor did he ever help us out with the physical work of the barn, so we didn’t expect him to. He wasn’t a “natural” with horses and I think animals have a grasp on narcissism and “Bad” people more so than humans. Although, he was good with our family dogs, so I don’t think my biological father is a full blown psychopath, but you can have many of these traits that serial killers and war criminals also have. There’s a sense that animals develop. It’s part of what makes riding so intense. The truly skilled are able to tap into a mental connection in a way that understands the beast beneath them. It’s a transfer of energy between yourself and the creature. They can sense your movement, your blood flow, your emotions. The way your body tenses that you may be impervious to until your instructor points it out.
To be a great equestrian, you must know yourself as intimately as you know the horses.
Most people, in my experience, don’t like themselves and aren’t willing to admit that in order to change. That, or they aren’t willing to compromise the walls of the houses built around them to live their freest, fullest life of adventure. A life of calculated risk, of learning and understanding and exploring the earth. Of embracing the beauty, grace, reality, and risk of “nature”. Of humanity just being another animal. A cool animal, nonetheless, but just another. Being connected to the earth is something that comes natural to actual horse girls. It only makes it “Weird” in the impassioned existence of East Coast USA mentality. An area that fetishizes the use of riding crops on horses as if a LOT of people who have NEVER had exposure to horses, aren’t as equally interested in BDSM. Horse girls get a bad rep just because they’re able to put a creature physically larger than them in its place, and our society does nothing to protect women and tries to eviscerate strong women at every step. Look at how we replaced RBG with Amy Phony Barrett, who will probably succeed in repealing and undermining every fucking contribution of that woman’s life.
I did not intend to die on Capitol Hill but if I must venture into public policy because of the sheer incompetence and pathetic charade of our current choices, so I will. It’s kinda surreal, the preclude to Gilead, but every tale has a beginning.
Horse people have seen, and been able to take, some of the most abused, neglected, and saddened animals you’ve ever imagined. Feed, nourish, love, and explore with them. Giving them back their purpose of wandering amongst the trees, bathing in the waters, wandering the sand, that their primal origin belongs in. Before humans began trading them for show–yet another method of weaponizing ornaments to society. Of admiring the beauty, the strength, the magnificence, yet wanting to confine it to their own terms.
Studying any animal species, particularly ones who have been “domesticated”, if you treat something like a wild, feral animal, it will act like a wild, feral animal. (Cough, REFORM OUR PRISON POPULATIONS. What the fuck are even “for profit” prisons? WHAT ARE YOU PROFITING FROM!?) If you’re hesitant of certain creatures, if you don’t respect their space, if you don’t learn the patience and that you may not be “entitled” to its trust, if you don’t learn how to enjoy “observation” over “experience” as appropriately, you will not succeed in the animal kingdom. Yet, we deviated from natural selection a long time ago. We use penicillin so much we’ve created SUPER gonorrhea and multi-drug-resistant bacteria once studied by Soviet Union era scientists hoping to create a chimeral weapon of biochemical warfare. Childbirth is coming so far that C-sections may be medically safer and the “default” method OVER NATURAL BIRTH in a hospital setting soon. We label poisonous substances with warning labels and have national hotlines to prevent worsened morbidity or increased mortality rates.
Yet, then you just want to disregard listening to scientists arbitrarily? You think you can just pick and choose when science matters because the reality is we can pick and choose when the things you’ve tied YOUR identity to, matter.
Most of you fail to interact with any other species of animal on a regular basis. And you wonder why you have so much cognitive dissonance? Why, no matter how much money you sequester, you can’t fill the empty void that there must be “more” to life? You convince yourself it’s worth it to work entire lives in barren buildings under artificial light. For me, it honestly was. I loved working from before sunrise to after sunset in a surgical setting because I genuinely enjoyed the work. However, I always knew it was temporary. I also was immediately working in the aftermath of my car accident and the monotony of the days, working on my feet, learning of new skills was soothing for my recovery, even if my seasonal depression was a little worse than usual. Seasonal depression isn’t so intense after full scale depression takes over though, so tomato tomato.
My love of medicine likely stemmed from a few things:
- Alcoholic farming family
Which, I’d like to point out, alcohol was often cheaper and safer to drink because we don’t require the federal government provide methods of safe, potable drinking water so alcoholism and bottle of choice is related to class structure, cultural implications, and systematic legislative cycles. - My second pony, and one of the loves of my life, Nicky, having squamous cell carcinoma skin cancer. He had it when we got him, it was two glorious years of friendship and love, and we took him on a monthly basis to an animal hospital in Leesburg that used chemotherapy, likely in a way tied to a research university to test prior to trials in humans, come to think of it.
- Growing up with three generations of my family constantly around each other, I watched both of my maternal grandparents die. My grandma’s palliative care journey as lung cancer turned to bone cancer, which caused her to be bedridden and ultimately succumb to pneumonia.
Did none of you fuckers crying out about coronavirus being listed on death certificates ever ask questions at funerals? Did you just avoid the funerals?
It’s no wonder I spent my undergrad doing oncological work at MD Anderson and the lab that helped influence the GlaxoSmithKline partnership with UNC’s research hospital. (We were on the third floor of the newest building, it was a BEAUTIFUL set up for a first lab. I was truly spoiled. Not to mention published in Nature Chemical Biology with my first work. Where does a girl go from there? Peer reviewed journals? Fuck it, I’ll start a podcast. Then, focusing on cancer epidemiology in grad school. My German professor who competed in the Olympics for high jump–predictable by his tall, willowy frame, said he wasn’t sure where my place was in science, but he was excited to follow it.
…Aren’t we all?
- The many, many funerals of classmates who overdosed, purposefully or not. Who were unfortunately capable of completing suicide. 2 of which, again, were in August. One of whom was one of my horse girl friends, actually. The second of my small pony club circle to shoot themselves out of existence. Horse people are more likely to be country people and also more likely to therefore own guns and/or hunt. The concept of mortality is often overwhelming without access to proper and affordable healthcare. Guns are quick, easy.
I’ve also seen patients who managed to blow off half of their faces and not die. They spend their lives searching for a new meaning, and are almost all thankful that they lived. Did it take them coming to the brink of death to maybe realize that? Sure. Western medicine can be incredible, though. But we have to know people are hurting, and we have to be able to reach them. We also have to be able to welcome them into a warm society and make life easier when it’s well within our abilities to do so.
Living on a farm is the “nature is metal” reddit page brought to life. As much beauty as there is, it’s the culmination of every minute of physical labor, every moment of attention to detail, every day of building on repetition. I experienced a lot, living on a farm. I slept in the barn for two months on a cot, because horses typically give birth at night and Nancy, our experienced broodmare (yes she was named after Nancy Drew, my true crime and strong independent female obsession started in my youth) would likely give birth quickly before the vet could be called, unless there were any complications. Watching Finnegan grow into his Irish Draught glory was remarkable. Even if there was a period where he would rear and buck and potentially kill us while we were weaning him. Toddlers, the terrible 2’s, am I right? I also watched Skunk, our boarder’s horse, get his eyelid caught on his water bucket. It was dangling off. It was as disgusting in person as I know hearing that was.
So no, I’ve never understood hiding reality from children. I don’t get the benefit of it, personally. Maybe it’s because I never had the option of whether I could grow up and not learn about death–military family and all. Maybe it’s because even when I was in France with Ella and Atticus, we had to calmly explain why the military patrolling the train stations with their AR-15’s were normal and Atticus was 2. Maybe it’s because I later also had to pull off into the doorway of a Parisian apartment as riot-gear-clad military police marched towards the protests we were trying to evade our third year back for summer vacation, when Atticus was 4 and we celebrated Ella’s 7th birthday at the carnival in the gardens across from the Louvre. Why go to the trouble of hiding them from the horrors of the world, of keeping them naive to it, just so it further oscillates those their age who might have to go through it silently? What good does it do to tell them to focus on only the “good” in such a way that they never learn coping mechanisms for the inevitable “bad”? You can’t have one without the other.
Dulling that reality only benefits yourself. It makes it easier to parent. They learn a false comfort with the world. Their perception, skewed, crafted, for comfort. That isn’t reality.
Horse people, but particularly horse women, are strong. They’re usually a little wild, yes, but I personally don’t see the negative in refusing to succumb to the meticulously elite and corrupt standards for “elegance” we glorify as “desirable”. Sorry that I have no interest in people who appear so bland they don’t live. Whose bodies aren’t covered in scars because they’ve never had to push their bodies, or just fell on a quarter in sheer bad luck? Priding themselves on “purity” in various forms. Who can only understand mental solitude in a room full of people they claim to know but don’t share anything of meaning with? Who are scared to face the reality of a combination of mental and physical solitude in such a way that you could disappear from the earth without a trace, deviating from all of your plans with some unexpected accident, and it may take a while before anyone were to go looking for you, if ever?
It’s weird to imagine people can find actual enjoyment in the fine arts, the result of channeling thousands of hours of pain and raw emotion, into performance, when they themselves don’t truly know struggle. Is this why people seek out art? It should evoke emotion, sure, but do you lack emotion otherwise? How sad a life it must be to only feel release during special weekend date nights. Why do you shun the things that make you feel?
My unwillingness to ignore finding a range of emotions every day, and not dismissing the overwhelmingly morbid because it makes my highs that much more appreciated, should not make me “weird”. Being connected to the earth like Pocahontas singing “Colors of the Wind” and embracing the beauty of nature and fighting fiercely for more sustainable, conservative lifestyles of less consumerism should not make me “Radical”.
“Horse girls” is just an overarching way of saying “independent women who don’t accept inappropriate behavior for their own safety and take it upon themselves to address it” which, obviously, is “WEIRD” in the United States with our fucking Sunday sermons reminding women to be submissive.
Our tax systems that allow singlehood to be financially treacherous and almost unattainable. Our method of policing which is incredibly invasive and psychologically devastating and the statistics are skewed against us so most people in general, but women especially, never come forward with sexual assault or domestic violence accusations. They excuse them because “he’s a good man in the community” and “he’s under a lot of pressure at work” as they pray away the guilt and fear and hope with time it will sting less. That, or they refuse to acknowledge it is problematic because they’re scared of being labeled a “victim” and associating that with “weakness” (Bullshit. It requires a lot more fucking strength to confront your abusers than it does to excuse them. Forgiveness, now, takes even MORE strength but some of us just aren’t quite there yet OR think “forgiveness” can also entail holding them accountable, speaking about it freely BECAUSE it affected you, and continues to, NOT because it makes the abuser feel like a piece of shit to realize the extent of their actions, which…FUCKING GOOD. Actions have consequences. You can’t just pray them away.) Or acknowledging that you were a victim subjects yourselves to victim blaming. People want to find the good, and in doing so discredit the reality or ignore the truth until its beating down their door and someone has to constantly REPEAT the WORST things they’ve faced because they’re tired of people not fucking believing them. Saying their “life isn’t hard” because they see these perfect outward products, glimpses of happiness, and their search for life to ultimately be “good”, because it HAS to be and they’re too terrified of the alternative, is so limited that they failed to realize the entire premise of Inside Out was you can’t have those glimmers of happiness without the hell. You can’t have the joy without experiencing the caverns of loss, of sadness. Acknowledging sadness doesn’t have to be met with disdain. Even if it was your hand that dealt it. It’s fucking hell to live in this country and watch the stupidity surrounding me with access to proper education, a holistic world view, and the awareness. Your guilt, because most of you know that you’re either wrong, or have committed horrifically wrong acts that you’re now worried will catch up to you, slowly but surely, is clouding you from growing.
True freedom is running wild and not letting your own ego interfere with your growth, which is not an easy task. It’s CONSTANTLY learning from the world around us, which can be very exhausting. It’s knowing that, across the animal kingdom, certain species belong amongst their own kind. Certain species are more submissive. Certain species are dominant, alpha, but in refusing to adapt, have destined themselves to lives of solitude. (Didn’t we all see how Kerchak ended up in Tarzan? C’mon.) Certain species mate for life. Others are destined to roam. Others forming symbiotic partnerships in harmony as a product of being transplanted into unknown territories or just unexpected friendships. Others observe, far above it all, following the wind and feeding off the carcasses of the dead.
“Horse girls” are connected to it all, because they’re constantly connected to a living, breathing being that is physically larger than them, but can be taught to move in unison. They’re more in tune with the Earth. With the knowledge of humanity’s place on this planet–the small blip we are in the grand scheme of life. The perspective of how small humans are, how insignificant. Yet, also how destructive.
American men just don’t understand emotion. They’ve only been allowed to outwardly care about cars and football. Football, a sport ONLY other US citizens play (very ethnocentric, I know) that encourages predominantly black men to exhibit brute force to maul each other on an illuminated stage for their entertainment, with absolutely no regard to the reality of how they’re damaging the one organ that supposedly sets us so apart from other species? And you don’t see how football is completely dehumanizing and the NFL is a modern day slave factory content on putting out and SHOWCASING actual violent offenders on a national stage as ROLE MODELS, all because they can catch a ball in a really cool way, re-examine your beliefs. Yes, fantasy football has allowed your friends to get together each year and pretend to have power over people so you can stomach your bullshit capitalism jobs a little better for a few weeks, but it’s JUST A TRADITION. Care about each other as men and male friends that much NORMALLY. We have been completing autopsies on players from 40-50 years ago (you know, since a lot of football players only live UNTIL THEIR 50’s) AND THEIR BRAINS ARE JUST MUSH. Do you know how dangerous this is for our society? When multiple head traumas are tied to violent crime and particularly serial killers? We have people who actually host DOG FIGHTING RINGS and parade them with multimillion dollar contracts as ROLE MODELS FOR OUR CHILDREN. We have people who abuse their spouses over and over again, including publicly. If they’re that rough in person, they’re far worse behind closed doors I say that from experience. We have people who drive drunk who we just continue to give a national platform for. We have people who would never do any of the community service the teams do if it weren’t organized by someone else. These brains we’re examining? Those are before helmet protocol changed, too. Before we started ducking heads and made the head the hardest part of your body, so you should just use it as a battering ram in a real “trust the equipment” mentality. The NCAA and NFL would realistically go bankrupt if actual studies were able to be conducted, from a third party who could not be intimidated into submission and was backed by the national government, for everything that is SURELY to come related to head trauma and concussions.
We don’t need to point the finger at lead in gasoline when we actively encourage unsustainable sports that deviate so fucking far from the Olympic mentality of fostering togetherness, although it DOES highlight a certain aspect of “specialization” (the “there’s a place for everyone) that really encapsulates how your skills may transition into corporate America structure. Functional fitness is cool. Fitness and team sports in general are cool. When they facilitate the basic things sports are supposed to facilitate. Crazy things like teamwork and facing adversity and, ultimately, HEALTH.
Don’t even get me started on the cars thing. Men love to name every automobile, missile, nuclear weapon, and war machine after WOMEN. You understand the intensity, the strength, the power. Stop kidding yourselves.
Go play lacrosse if you want to hit level someone with a purpose. (Also, what the fuck is woman’s lacrosse. All of the midfielders from soccer who enjoy running just dominate. Please give them shoulderpads. They can handle it, I promise you.)
Better yet, play lacrosse on horses like I do if you REALLY want a challenge. Nothing like the threat of onward collision with a thousand pound animal of sheer physical strength and stamina to heighten the experience. This is why I’m not scared of you men. My nonchalance and dissonance is the result of that, coupled with my own history of sexual assault and related trauma. I’ve literally been knocked down and stomped on by a GIANT BLACK DRAFT HORSE THAT LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING SAURON WOULD’VE RODE INTO BATTLE. I don’t think I’m “weird” I just think I’m not the submissive type of woman we encourage with our Christian repression and undertones in this country. As much Christian background as my own family had, at least they were military transplants from Missouri, so we had the midwest gender role breakdown that encompasses farm work. Doesn’t matter who is bailing the hay, just matters that it gets done.
Maybe, just maybe, if more American men were actually connected to the Earth, capable of being vulnerable and handing someone else the reigns to guide them, knowing doing so may enable the adventure of a lifetime, MAYBE “horse girls” wouldn’t seem so fucking weird.