Page 5 of Maverick
It never bothered me until recently. I’m pissed off that Harmony’s engagement has compounded it, that it’s making me obsess over what I don’t have. But I guess it’s that feeling of treading water. Of realizing that I’m now in my mid-twenties, and I still haven’t achieved…
It’s silly, and I know that. I know that I have a lot of time, it just doesn’t feel like it. My parents had me in equestrian sports from the time I learned to walk. Achievement has been my entire life. Breaking off and doing the rodeo was me being angry. I always intended to get back on the Olympic track.
I always intended to have a life. One that includes men and sex and relationships.
But I’m just sort of drowning in the passing years, and maybe it’s existential dread after watching one of my best friends practically get disemboweled in the arena. But whatever the reason, it feels a whole lot more intense than normal.
And I’m not a fan.
I’ve never been good at sitting still and feeling my feelings. I like todothings. And sometimes I get heedless. Reckless. Witness my entire side quest into barrel racing. That followed one completely blistering fight with my parents after they scouted an amazing horse for my sister and sent her to Switzerland to train, while I was left to my own devices.
And there was no explanation for that, beyond the fact that they seem to believe in her talent more than they believe in mine.
Maybe it’s fair, maybe it isn’t. Maybe there’s something about her skill that I can’t see. My own bias about my own abilities. I don’t know.
But none of us covered ourselves in glory after that last blow-up.
They said that it’s because I’m impulsive – they aren’t wrong. That my focus is only dialed in sometimes, not all the time, and that I switch up too often, and I know that’s true, too. That’s one of my problems. When something obsesses me, there’s nothing else.
Then when I get bored it’s hard for me to keep going, and for me, bored comes with being too good at something sometimes.
But I kept up with my dressage.
Of course, I threw myself into barrel racing with more intensity than I’d focused on my dressage in a long while, because it was new, and part of me wonders if my disillusionment with it now has to do with not having more external markers of improvement to make.
I have won a championship, after all.
Idospeak to my parents.
I go home for the holidays, for birthdays. I visit during the off-season, but it has never been the same.
Not since I screamed about all the things that had been festering inside of me for all those years.
Not since I told them exactly how I feel.
Exactly.
Honesty can cut pretty deep sometimes. And I’m not even sure if it was entirely fair honesty. It was brutal.
And now I need to pull my head out of my rear and get ready for the ride tonight. So I do. I do some trial runs around the arena. I always try to strike a balance between being warmed up and being tired. I definitely don’t want to wear out Cloud Dancing or myself. And by the time the rodeo is about to begin for the night, I feel ready.
I’ll be third tonight, and I feel extra antsy for some reason. Like there’s an electrical current under my skin.
I wait. And wait for my turn.
And when it finally comes, I’m ready. Though I feel a bit more edgy and reckless than usual.
And I can feel the same kind of energy radiating off of Cloud Dancing. It’s the thing I love about equestrian sports. You can be good, but you also have to be one with your horse. You have to work together. You’re a pair. You work together as a team. And I can feel that it’s not just me who isn’t totally ready tonight. I wish I knew why.
Maybe she is picking up on my issues. Which I really don’t like. I don’t want to be the cause of her jumpy behavior.
We move up to the open gate and wait.
I let out a long, slow breath, and then, I urge her forward. We’re off like lightning. Fast. Turning sharply around the first barrel, I feel her hooves uncertain beneath her. I try to regain my balance in time to go around the next barrel, but we’re still off-kilter, and that’s when her body clangs against the side of the barrel, and it falls over into the dust. I haven’t dropped a barrel in years.
My stomach sinks, and I feel ill.
I’m not going to win.
