Last Summer

Last Summer

The smell of a little cafe where the barista knows your order (“capp, no sugar?”)

Driving to work on a Saturday morning through the deserted streets

Driving home from a different work at midnight on a Tuesday; the streets just as deserted

 Screaming across the kitchen table at your helpless mother how much I fucking hate my life!

Crying yourself not to sleep, but to anxious, sickening wakefulness

Being greeted with a genuine ‘good morning!’ as you walk into work

Going for a job interview when all you want to do is curl up in bed and never venture into the real world again

Feeling physically sick just seeing a place you used to go together

Debating the value of leaving – for real

Reigniting a dormant passion

Realising that some jobs you never expected to take can not only teach you valuable things, but also be thoroughly enjoyable

Walking into work and everybody saying ‘oh my god, what’s wrong?’ (it’s written all over your face)

Getting so drunk the night becomes a blur

Staying in other people’s beds; waking up with the knowledge that that won’t fix it and now you merely hate yourself

Waking up from nightmares not sure whether they were real or not, whether you’d prefer for them to be or not

Rekindling old friendships

Discovering a liking for children, and a sure-fire way of interacting with them

Broadening friendship groups (and then narrowing them again, by choice or default)

Failing

Succeeding

Sobbing through a throat raw from screaming that you can’t deal with this anymore, that you have to see a doctor or a professional or anybody

The realisation that that was probably one of the best decisions you’ve ever made

Seeing him out without you and breaking down completely all over again

And again

…and again

Realising that despite all the help and all the progress that you can’t make a life here, not now

Cutting off contact, re-establishing it and then cutting it off again

Riding your horse in the river on a warm summer’s day, laughing genuinely for the first time in a long while as he paws water high enough that it splashes your face

Wrapping your hands around a warm coffee brewed by your favourite barista as you sit outside and wait for it to be time to go to work

Sipping the same type of coffee as you tell people that you’re leaving

Letting old mentors know that you’re pursuing your dream

The first Christmas without him – painful, raw, agonising

Running to mum’s arms on Christmas Eve when the tears just won’t stop

A taboo relationship with a convenient person that makes you realise that sometimes affection springs out of the most unlikely of places

The disagreement with your best friend; the first actually serious one you’ve had

Writing, re-writing, emailing, researching, applying, paying, researching some more

Taking the leap even though you’re not sure where it’ll take you and even if it’s more flight than adventure at that moment

Making the most of the beach while you can

Reading updates for uni and realising that you don’t even need to worry about that

Feeling excited, and then disenchanted, and then excited all over again

Choosing a date

Booking a flight

Saying goodbye

Arriving…

For a brand new summer on the other side of the world.

For When I Forget

This is my backyard.

This is sunrise…

…and sunset

This is the (fairly) local winery

This is the good weather…

… and the bad

This is one of the Real Life Pokemon I’ve discovered

This is the face I get to see every day

These are the amazing people I get to spend so much time with

This is the face that neighs every time I go to his paddock

This is a typical photo

This is a normal Saturday night

This is two and a bit hours away

This is my home

and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Questions (and exploration)

I’m living my dream, but I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. I’m 22; technically I’m grown up. There’s people my age that are finishing degrees and starting careers in fields as prestigious as law and accounting. People my age that have been living out of home for four to six years. People doing internships, getting promoted, starting business, heck I know there’s 22 year old millionaires out there.

Sometimes I wonder whether I actually have the drive that these people have. If pursuing my dream like I have means that I’m more passionate than them, or whether I’m just avoiding ‘real world’ responsibilities. I came here knowing that my budget would be tight (no room for savings; no thoughts of owning a house yet), that I’d have no way to get another job to combat that, that it could be seen (even by me) as putting my life on hold for a year to chase a fancy that will never lead to anything.

What scares me about thinking that is that when I think about where or what I want to be in ten years, I come up entirely blank. Words flit through my head – professional, rider, eventing, acupuncture, psychology – but when I try to pin down exactly where I’m trying to go, I have no idea. Perhaps that’s normal for someone my age – the 20s is a time when you explore and pursue all the possibilities you can. Yet that doesn’t mean that it has to be wasted; and when I hear about so-and-so graduating, or starting a job in a law firm, or getting married or pregnant or buying a house, I feel like that’s what I’m doing. Marking time. Wasting time.

It’s a horrible feeling. Especially when I know deep in my gut that what I’m doing now is my dream job. And the thing that makes me wonder where I’m going to be in ten years isn’t a lack of passion or love for what I’m doing now, but a fear that I’m not going to be able to succeed.

Horses, equestrian, this career path is somewhat unique. You can train your entire life to be a professional rider and then have an accident which means that you have to take years off, or that you’ll never ride again. People keep talking about backups in this sport. When you become a lawyer you don’t need a backup. Nurse, doctor, psychologist, hell even jobs like journalists or receptionists don’t need backups. But the moment you start to talk about making a career in horses, that’s the same moment people ask what you’re going to do for real, or what you’re going to do just in case.

There are people in this sport that have had serious accidents and managed to keep their life; to teach even when they couldn’t speak, to get back to riding after being told they never would. But even then, if you have no ability to teach lessons, if riding is your only forte; what then?

Even within the equestrian field I’m at a total loss. Obviously riding is very important to me and I’d love to be able to train and ride. I’d love to teach lessons too. It sort of sounds like I’d like to be a head trainer at a facility, or my own facility; needs a lot more thought as far as business and all that is concerned though. Could I be a full-time groom for the rest of my life? What about a barn manager? I don’t necessarily want to be a ‘professional working student’; but how many years then should I allow myself to take those jobs? When do I say ‘no that’s it I’m not a working student any more, I’m going to apply for trainer jobs’? Will I ever get to that point?

And that’s all assuming that it’s going to be horses. When I think that perhaps it might not be a whole other ream of possibilities spills at my feet; should I take the extra four years, get my psych qualification, and then try horses again? Should I switch to social work and only take a couple of years and then look at horses? Or social work and then a couple of years of that work and then reassess horses? What about acupuncture? That’s a good horsey backup, can I take the time to get those qualifications? But if I have an accident riding that stops me from teaching that’ll probably stop me from doing acupuncture as well. I enjoyed retail, but do I want to do that if there comes a point I can’t get a horsey job? What about the money? Do I go for psychology and money and flexibility and extra time and effort or stick where I am knowing that affording a house, a life, is going to be far in the future?

The questions are overwhelming. The answers are absent.

But.

I’m asking the questions. They’re there, in the back of my mind. Every now and again I look up housing in areas near well-known English eventing yards – I wonder if I could work there and afford to live off property. I look up acupuncture courses and the restrictions of my visa – I don’t think I can do official education right now. What courses do they have in England? I think about what it would cost as far as my riding career is involved to pursue psychology. I think about whether I could cope with going back to that now that I’ve been so involved with something I truly truly love.

And more than that; I’m doing something I truly, truly love. Some days are a struggle. It’s hard to do physical work every day, and some mornings it’s difficult to think about doing the same chores over again that I’ve been doing for nearly five months (!!!) now. But then I kiss Cody on the nose and give Gyles a hug and take Calib for a hack, and I know that as far as jobs are concerned, I’m home.

Ten years from now, I have no idea what I’ll be doing.

Ten months from now, I have very little idea what I’ll be doing.

But right now I’m living my dream. And I’m realising that yes, this is my dream job. No matter the drawbacks, no matter the backups, no matter the lack of titles; working with horses is everything I thought it would be, and more.

I’m not wasting time. I’m discovering how to make the most of it, one day at a time.