Hagintha Woods

I had a sudden moment of clarity whilst drinking tea.

There was no fanfare, no recent success nor present failure. The world was simply existing as time ticked by, and sometime between my first sip and the ensuing swallow, a fact clicked into place where there was only the murky vagueness of ignorance before.

I had been struggling with self-image, and had been for a while.

Not in the sense where I was dissatisfied with my body, but perhaps… A dissatisfaction toward my own personality, in a way.

It was a disapproval that had been building up over time, without my own realising, till the tea swept past it on its way down my oesophagus, dislodging it just enough for me to witness it in all of its entirety. It was as if a cat had knocked down a decoration that had been on the mantlepiece of my subconscious, making me stop and stare at the item on the floor anew, where I’d long glossed over it as a part of the room. How long had that been there?

I had been frustrated, recently, with a nagging discontent about where I am, and yet with a lack of any real ideas or impetus over where I would go.

I would not have described myself to be happy, and yet whenever I thought of things that pique my interest, any search turned up qualifications, skillsets, or sometimes just the unfortunate reality of not being in the right location, seeing it at the right time, or being a citizen of a particular country.

Sometimes, when I got frustrated enough at my lack of movement and stretched my hand out to try anyway, it was only met with rejection. In my lowest moments, of multiple attempts and just as many failures, I would think of my current position, and catch myself thinking that I would be fine staying where I am. That if I wasn’t making any progress in my attempts to find something else for myself, that perhaps it was because the current situation actually wasn’t as bad as it thought.

And yet, when I thought of my hair grey, working the halls of my workplace, I would get irreparably upset, filled with a restless, uneasy sense of disappointment.

I’d been trying not to think about what that meant for me.

Of the choices I had, I did think I picked the best one. That did not mean I was satisfied.

This, I knew. And I think the repeated frustration, the journaling about said frustration, and the frenzied running from settling in my situation out of inertia had inadvertently formed a negative self-image within my mind.

An image of myself, constricted by fear, stewing in discontent and staying where I was, but blaming the world and others around me for it. Of always having a great idea of what I could do, but never having that special something or putting in enough effort to work on my situation and make it a reality.

I was always telling myself I was made for more, but what if I was simply blinding myself to my own inadequacies? That the problem was just that I was fickle, bored and reluctant to do things that were hard?

It was against everything I stood for, my fears, wrapped into a bitter little bundle and served up to me with the dry aftertaste of tannins.

But fortunately, the image did not come alone.

Close on its heels was a memory.

It was during one of my horse riding lessons. Or more accurately, the time just before, when the lesson had not yet begun. I had mounted my horse and entered the arena, just moving around at a sedate pace to warm up two separate bodies of joints.

My steed in question was a mare named Diane, a horse I would profess to being unhealthily intimidated by due to a number of previously unfortunate falls. She was unpredictable and in possession of a very mean buck, and to quite a few instructors, this meant that she was right at the edge of my discomfort zone, which was exactly where they wanted me to be.

I don’t really remember what happened next.

There was a vague sense of foreboding, a jolt at a corner, and the next thing I knew, the fence was coming up to meet me.

Now, I’m usually a person who would expound on the inevitability and benefits of falling. I believe that failure is a part of a journey, and one stumbles as they climb, just as a child falls as they learn to walk. I’d fallen millions of times before, to the point where I would say I was quite proud of my ability both to stay in the saddle and to fall when the situation called for it.

I would try to stay on, lean back, keep my heels down and think through the panic. However, once the fall was coming at me, I would take a deep breath, twist, spread the surface area, and use the impact to roll, rise and try again.

But that day, it was all wrong.

The fence was coming toward me at the wrong angle, gaps and neck breaking bars where there should be empty space. I barely turned my body in time, and the impact shook itself through me. The force arced through my back and shoulders, slamming into my spine uncomfortably.

As Diane balked backwards, her mane a flowing, impassioned battlecry of movement, the breath had rushed out of me, and there was something hurt and bruised in my lungs. Pain radiated through my body, and a wheeze sounded from my lips whenever I tried to get some air.

Often when I hit the ground, I would be rolling, frustration sparking in my body, thoughts on how to prevent this the next time. But this time, all I could feel was pain, blaring through my chest so loud the adrenaline could not drown it.

Struggling to unsteady feet, I watched her as others tried to catch her, feeling adrift and removed from my body. When they managed to catch her, I stepped forward mechanically, reaching out to hold the reins.

I looked at her, not without a small amount of trepidation. Like her namesake, Diane’s body was heaving, a scalding heat exuding from it, a goddess and a force of nature exuding her presence on the world. Briefly, I wondered if there were more falls in store for me today, and almost as if she sensed it, she fixed me with an even look and puffed, the warm breath gusting across my face.

“Come on then, get on.” My coach said, in the no-nonsense type of tone that she used for both misbehaving horses and riders alike, and I was swinging myself back up, my feelings somewhere between my chest and my mouth.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, edging the words past the lump I didn’t want to name. I could do a trot, though it made me a little queasy, but perhaps asking for a canter would be too much for now.

Still, if she asked me to try, I would attempt it nonetheless.

My coach stared at me, and no matter how brave I tried to act, I knew she probably saw what I was pretending didn’t exist.

“Walk.” She finally said. I looked down, hating how my body sagged in relief. My hands were shaking.

“That’s it?” I persisted despite myself. I was used to the thousands of coaches before telling me I now had to move, to act, to go to that exact corner, ask my horse to run, to get my horse’s attention focused on me once more.

“That’s it.” My coach replied, turning around- I ignored the way my heart dropped as she let go of the reins- and walking away. As she reached the other side of the fence to return to her lesson (mine hadn’t even started yet, after all. We’d simply chosen to warm up with an aplomb), I took a deep breath, and asked for a walk.

Far from when I kept pushing myself to run right after a fall, this felt worse, almost.

When I immediately started running, I went from danger to danger, and by the time I realised I was scared, I had faced it, the lesson was over, and I had already sat back in the saddle despite my feelings.

Walking slowly like this instead gave my mind plenty of time and energy to ruminate and fold in on itself. I could notice the swaying motion of the walk, pinpoint the exact ways in which my back and joints hurt, and still had ample space to panic whenever she looked strangely at a corner.

On the first round, I was getting queasy. By the third, I thought I was going to kill myself with palpitations before Diane would even do anything.

But by the fifth round, a new emotion had started to take hold, one that crept up from my toes and twitched at my fingers.

Restlessness.

As I stood there, walking in circles, watching all the other horse-rider pairs trotting, cantering and pushing themselves, I realised I wanted to do that too. I was still afraid, but that feeling was growing stronger, tickling at my skin.

When it grew strong enough to feel like a physical itch upon my skin, I asked for a small trot at the safer side of the arena, stopping after just a few steps. Then, I asked for another. After 10 minutes, I was doing a slow canter, albeit more watchfully.

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.” My coach said later, when our lesson had begun and she’d made her way over to join me once more. “Getting up and walking is already great. I didn’t need you to canter.”

“I know,” I’d said sheepishly. “But I was just going around doing nothing.”

Then, my coach grinned, and I realised that she’d known all along. “You’re not the type I have to push,” she explained later. “You’re scared, but you want to do what you can. As long as you show up, once you’re ready for it, you’ll want to do more because you’ll get bored.”

‘You’ll get bored.’ Not ‘You are brave’, or ‘you are disciplined’. There were many other, more complimentary things to say.

But she was right. I did get bored.

The walking was scary at first, but after a while, it was boring. And I had been afraid, but not more so than I had needed something to stimulate me, to plunge deeply into a problem I’d identified, or explore my boundaries.

For it wasn’t that I couldn’t bear to walk. I’d gone on trail rides and strolls before, and I’d had the pleasure of experiencing many more since, and I’d enjoyed every second. There was a pleasure to be relished in deliberate slowness.

No. What I’d been unable to stand was that I was walking with the implicit knowledge that I was playing safe, that there were more things I could do, that I knew how to do. That I’d brought myself up to the plate and now I was downplaying my own abilities because of my fear.

At the start, walking was all I could do, and so that was all I did.

But as it got routine, my body remembered the rhythms, readjusted, and I was looking to the next step whilst I kept walking my little circles. My eyes were starting to roam as my brain had started to think- What next?

Though it had been years back, those words had stayed within me, slowly getting buried under time and experiences. However, they’d never disappeared, and right then, I heard them as clearly as I had the first time.

Boredom not as something good or bad, but simply a trait that existed, that was then worked with, factored into aiding one’s goals.

That you didn’t have to fight yourself for success, only to accept yourself as you were, without averting your eyes or covering what was there, but also without reproach.

Perhaps I’d been looking at my situation and rejections the wrong way. I’d been frustrated at the way I had been trying different things and yet shrunk back when they seemed harder than I’d thought upon first glance. I’d called myself fickle for finding multiple things that caught my eye instead of one directed thing I could push all my efforts towards.

Conversely, whilst being afraid of staying still, I’d also been frustrated at my inability to do so all the same- if I’d chosen this job, why couldn’t I commit? Instead of having to face all these problems and frustration toward my situation, wouldn’t it have been so much easier if I’d just liked where I was?

My irritation was multi-fold, but at the base of it all was a pool of self-hatred, fueled by my discontent, and then by a dissatisfaction of my discontent.

But perhaps instead of being fickle by exploring multiple avenues, I was expanding my boundaries. Perhaps by trying and searching, I was showing up and remaining open, and ultimately when I did give up it was because I’d sensed that this wasn’t something I wanted to continue. Perhaps the situation did not lie in scolding myself to stay in my lane, but in supporting my curiosity, allowing myself to take on a beginner’s course in what I was interested in when the need called for it.

Because I am easily bored, and I can trust in that boredom.

I can trust that when I just get myself in the game, I would give it a fair shot. Because jumping down a cliff’s edge would be intimidating, but if I brought myself all the way to the edge where the drop yawns beneath me, who was to say that finding myself there, I wouldn’t find the rush preferable to walking all the way back down?

And if I did try and I got tripped up, and eventually threw in the towel, who was to say that it was all for a nothing like I kept telling myself? The world is vast, and there are a million things that sound interesting, and perhaps, even with the most scathing of expectations, a hundred that would be just as great as they sound, if not more.

I’d given my job a fair shot and a good amount of time. I am easily bored, and if there were personal satisfaction to be found from going further and pushing harder, I would have done that, if only to experience something new. If I knew that it didn’t work out, why not acknowledge that I’d tried, and this might just be something that sounded nice but simply wasn’t for me instead of telling myself that I was dysfunctional for it not to be enough for me?

Because I had proof.

Horse riding was scary at times, but it was something I truly loved, and when I stepped up and brought myself into the saddle, I wanted more.

If this was something I truly liked or saw potential in, showing up would make me want to improve.

It wasn’t what I feared, that I lacked inner drive, or motivation, or something intrinsic that would forever doom my way forward, no matter which path I chose to take.

This path was simply not for me, and I couldn’t have known that till I’d chosen to walk it.

And now that I had my answer, the only erroneous thing to then do would be to stay and hope that a miracle made it better.

In that second of clarity, my actions and thoughts had not changed, but holding them to the light in a different frame with different instances of supporting evidence lead to a completely different conclusion.

I viewed myself in a more supportive way, and believed in the self that had gotten me this far, because I was kinder to myself. Not in an idealised fashion, where I would protect myself from all perceived slights, but in a more realistic, accepting way.

I am fickle and indecisive. I am easily bored. I get tempted to stay in situations that are comfortable, even if they might be harmful in the long run.

And for that, I am thankful.

I can try new things and delve deeply into obscure topics that seemingly have no real purpose, because that gives me pleasure and fulfillment. I can improve myself even when faced with setbacks, because when faced with a path forward, I don’t want to stay still.

I can try multiple new things because I can trust that if they don’t give me personal satisfaction, I can set them down.

If I need to stay somewhere I do not want to be for a while, but for a greater purpose I have in mind, I know that I can tough it out, even if it hurts me. Additionally, I also know it will get easier once I am used to it. Even the hardest tasks I’ve tried get easier once they are routine. Since I know myself and the temptation to stay in a situation once it’s routine, I know that I just need to have a clear timeline and an exit plan for once I do get comfortable.

And I will work with myself. I will force myself to the starting point, to try introductory courses. I will look back on myself and see if I am holding unto anything just because I’m used to gripping it tightly. If I look back on things and find that I am growing bored, I will let them go.

For I have not gotten bored of riding, of writing, of swimming. I have not grown tired of caring for the people I love. The things that really matter to me continue to matter, even through time and adversity. I only need to trust in that.

In this way, I will take all of myself by the hand and walk with it into the future. Not simply because it would be kind or advantageous, or even to keep an eye on my vices.

Simply because it is a part of me, and all of me deserves to enjoy the harvest of the seeds we tilled.