Morose. Part 1

I knew there was a problem when I didn’t want to ride. A big problem.

This had never really happened to me before. Sure, there had been times, mostly in the winter, that I didn’t really want to drive 30 minutes or more out to the barn to ride, but once I got out there I was ready to get on my horse. February in Cleveland, OH, can be cold and snowy and some days I would just rather stay home and share a mug of hot chocolate with my kids than freeze my butt off in the 20 degree barn. But this time it was different. I didn’t want to ride.

In fact, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to eat, or get out of bed. I was having my first, and hopefully only, bout with depression. This was ten days ago.

Normally I’m a very upbeat person. I’m the eternal optimist, and really believe the best in people and situations. I’m also a bit hyper, but that helps me “get stuff done”. That’s what I do. I Get Stuff Done. If I wasn’t wound a little too tightly I wouldn’t have the energy to cram everything into a day that I do. Normally I’m scurrying around from place to place with a song playing in my head and a spring in my step.

So what happened to me that made me not want to ride? The answer is unclear.

I think I can say it started two weeks ago with thinking about my friend and former riding instructor Blair. You can read about her story here –

http://dressagemom.blogspot.com/2006/11/of-roses-black-and-red-part-1.html

19 years later I still have unresolved feelings about what happened. For years after she disappeared I would “see” her at horse shows, or see “her” truck on the road and try desperately to drive next to the truck to see if it was her. There was never closure of the situation, even though I know in my heart that she is dead. Still, every now and then I use the magical internet to search for her.

In fact, during this last bit of searching I was able to reconnect (through Facebook) with two other riding instructors that I knew from when I was a kid. While this was all very nice, it still wasn’t finding Blair, even though I knew I would not find her. I did find her High School Alumni page, where they had her listed in the “In Memoriam” section. It had her senior portrait. I met her three years after that picture was taken. She was so young.

At that point I was just sad about Blair, but this had happened before and usually amounted to nothing other than being sad and maybe crying a little at the injustice of it all. That’s when everything gets a little complicated.

Later that week I went to my therapist to have a session to deal with my emetophobia. That’s fear of vomit, or vomiting. I’ve had this problem since I was 12 when I had my first seizure. After the seizure, I threw up. No big deal, until it came to pass that the only times I threw up were after I had a seizure. And let me tell you, having a seizure is a terrible experience. I had them from the time I was 12 until I was 21, and then they stopped. The doctors didn’t so anything about it, saying that I would probably just grow out of them, which I did. Even though the seizures had stopped, they had ingrained in me a deep seated fear of vomit due to the trauma of the seizure that immediate preceded vomiting.

Last year, in November, I had another seizure (my first in almost 20 years) brought on by my four year old daughter Macey vomiting. My husband was there for the whole thing. He wrote about it from his point of view on his blog –

http://www.scripturient.com/2008/11/257-in-which-our-hero-desperately.html

This set off a series of events where I finally went into therapy to get rid of this emetophobia.

To be continued...