umaride
New User
(Warning: TMI, also I've just realised some terminology that may make people think of certain mental illnesses and also brief mention of suicidal thoughts)
I love horses, always have, always will. Two walls of my bedroom are dedicated solely to books on horses - there’s something on everything in there, from books on behaviour to books on race training, it’s my proudest collection. I’ve volunteered and worked part time at rescues, with dealers, in riding schools, etc. I specifically chose to go to a non academic university, even though I was strongly recommended by teachers to aim for Russell Group, just because it allowed me to stay at home, there were quite a few livery yards near my parent’s house, and I would have the time to own a horse. I own a massive assortment of tack, have shared horses on and off since I was 12, and currently work at a job that again I chose because it would best support time-wise/financially a horse.
I have wanted to own a horse since the minute I saw my first one. And yet I just can’t bring myself to buy one. And I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I go through what I call “highs”, of wanting a horse desperately. I spend hours studying possible diseases, buy grooming kits or rope halters and the like, might even spend my whole evening bookmarking ads of horses for sale. In those phases, I”m convinced that I can buy a horse, and that I’m as ready to by my first horse as I’ll ever be. These phases can last anywhere from 3 hours to 2 weeks, but they always end. And I crash hard every time - hard enough that, even when the ‘lows’ over, it makes me wonder whether I’ll be stuck like this for life.
Triggers for crashing vary, and more often than not they’re very small things. For example, once I got a bit confused about how a breed society had explained transferring ownership of a horse. Not a big deal at all, and it only takes 1 minute to find out, but somehow that spiralled into me getting so nauseous over the idea of owning a horse that I actually threw up. I had been continuing planning buying a horse for over a week and 2 minutes was all it took for me to give up. Another time it was that a horse I liked at the rescue was adopted. I should have been happy for it - and I was - but instead I spent the rest of the week in my room, throwing my head against the wall until it bled so I could stop thinking about how maybe I should have adopted that horse.
More recently, I thought I had changed. The “high” had lasted three months, and though there were moments where I wavered, I was doing pretty good. On the way to try a horse though, someone bumped into me and that was enough for me to go straight back home, write very apologetically to the owner that circumstances had changed, and then to write back to all the other people I had written to about horses saying that the horses weren’t what I was looking for even though there was one in that mix that was my dream horse.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with me: commitment issues, anxiety, f*ck knows. But it exhausts me, it really does. And the worst part is that there’s another part of me who works so hard to provide a life for this theoretical horse, the one who’s been buying horse books for my collection since I was 9, the one who cries at night that they’ll never have a horse. And yet I can’t seem to make myself change. Nothing’s worked from the couple sessions I had with a therapist to giving myself a break from horses completely (awful idea - I ended up with suicidal thoughts, granted that when I next got a riding lesson it also made me think that this was what I was stuck with for life, and then I didn’t feel much better)
For anyone who’s read this far, a) I’m surprised and b) have you experienced anything similar (as in, your own self preventing you from achieving a life long goal) and if yes how did you get around it?
I love horses, always have, always will. Two walls of my bedroom are dedicated solely to books on horses - there’s something on everything in there, from books on behaviour to books on race training, it’s my proudest collection. I’ve volunteered and worked part time at rescues, with dealers, in riding schools, etc. I specifically chose to go to a non academic university, even though I was strongly recommended by teachers to aim for Russell Group, just because it allowed me to stay at home, there were quite a few livery yards near my parent’s house, and I would have the time to own a horse. I own a massive assortment of tack, have shared horses on and off since I was 12, and currently work at a job that again I chose because it would best support time-wise/financially a horse.
I have wanted to own a horse since the minute I saw my first one. And yet I just can’t bring myself to buy one. And I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I go through what I call “highs”, of wanting a horse desperately. I spend hours studying possible diseases, buy grooming kits or rope halters and the like, might even spend my whole evening bookmarking ads of horses for sale. In those phases, I”m convinced that I can buy a horse, and that I’m as ready to by my first horse as I’ll ever be. These phases can last anywhere from 3 hours to 2 weeks, but they always end. And I crash hard every time - hard enough that, even when the ‘lows’ over, it makes me wonder whether I’ll be stuck like this for life.
Triggers for crashing vary, and more often than not they’re very small things. For example, once I got a bit confused about how a breed society had explained transferring ownership of a horse. Not a big deal at all, and it only takes 1 minute to find out, but somehow that spiralled into me getting so nauseous over the idea of owning a horse that I actually threw up. I had been continuing planning buying a horse for over a week and 2 minutes was all it took for me to give up. Another time it was that a horse I liked at the rescue was adopted. I should have been happy for it - and I was - but instead I spent the rest of the week in my room, throwing my head against the wall until it bled so I could stop thinking about how maybe I should have adopted that horse.
More recently, I thought I had changed. The “high” had lasted three months, and though there were moments where I wavered, I was doing pretty good. On the way to try a horse though, someone bumped into me and that was enough for me to go straight back home, write very apologetically to the owner that circumstances had changed, and then to write back to all the other people I had written to about horses saying that the horses weren’t what I was looking for even though there was one in that mix that was my dream horse.
I really don’t know what’s wrong with me: commitment issues, anxiety, f*ck knows. But it exhausts me, it really does. And the worst part is that there’s another part of me who works so hard to provide a life for this theoretical horse, the one who’s been buying horse books for my collection since I was 9, the one who cries at night that they’ll never have a horse. And yet I can’t seem to make myself change. Nothing’s worked from the couple sessions I had with a therapist to giving myself a break from horses completely (awful idea - I ended up with suicidal thoughts, granted that when I next got a riding lesson it also made me think that this was what I was stuck with for life, and then I didn’t feel much better)
For anyone who’s read this far, a) I’m surprised and b) have you experienced anything similar (as in, your own self preventing you from achieving a life long goal) and if yes how did you get around it?
