(no subject)
Thanks to youth, vigor, and general good health, I recovered quickly, returning to work after ten or twelve days. (They instruct you to wait a minimum of two weeks, longer given the nature of my work) I pulled myself together, an accomplishment I credit to divine intervention, and went back to galloping. Rode the first weekend of the little bush meet in Arnett, OK. Won a race. Lived my dream.
The night before the second and final weekend of this race meet, Schad finally returned my desperate and numerous voicemails. Said he didn't like the way things had been and he was pround of how I'd held myself together that week and he wanted to see me. This added up to make-up sex. The next morning we carpooled to the races and he told me he was going back to his ex in Kentucky. My hurt and anger threatened to boil over anew, but I knew that any display of emotion at that point would only drive him from my life without a trace. I stuffed it.
That is, right up until the wreck. We left the gate side by side on a couple quarter horses. His horse took a left. My horse took a left to avoid his horse. The last thing I remember was being pointed directly at the inside rail, everything happening too fast. Monk Hall's voice in my head saying to you have to turn their head toward the rail so they can see that they're about to hit it. Shit. God. Jesus. Fuck. No. Schad.
The way it was described to me sounded like my horse actually had his front end up over the rail, ready to jump it, and manged to turn himself and come back down on the right side of it. I came around somehwere near the middle of the track, face down, after a few seconds by some reports and after several minutes by others. I can vaguely remember the face of one of Tyrone's grooms but in this really dark metallic kind of light, and someone putting me on the pony to go back to the trailers. The next thing I remember was being holed up under the saddle-rack in the front of Ty's trailer, wanting very badly to go to sleep, but the fucking EMT's wouldn't leave me alone. Schad came through once and I tried to talk to him but he ignored me in the rudest, cruelest way possible and all the emotional stress of the previous weeks caught up with me again.
I was hysterical. I'd gotten some really weak anti-depressants shortly after the abortion, seriously, like 10mg doses that would take, like 400 to OD on. But the EMT's had a fit when I tried to take what I had left of them, convinced I was on drugs, and they ended up calling a cop out to restrain me. You can imagine how well that went over. They took me to the emergency room where I was given two shots to make me "calm down and be nice" after which the paperwork was put in front of me to sign giving them permission to do so. If I could prove that that was how it happened I would be suing them out of business. I was then taken to the psych ward for a good ol' 72 hour hold. That night, as a result of combining anti-psychotic meds with a head-injury no one at the ER bothered to look for because none of the emergency responders bothered to mention it, my blood pressure dropped to 5/20, my heartrate dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of 20bpm, and that was when they could find it at all, and I was rushed back to the ER. I woke up late the following evening back at the psychiatric place, peed, drank water, and slept until late the following morning. Met with a panel of people who I'm sure were largely unqualified and made it fairly clear to them that my incarceration was unnecessarry. They chose to detain me for an additional 24 hours for observation. Justifiable given the fact that they'd nearly killed me the night before, but still pretty irritating to me when I got the bill: $500/day. Horse shit, pure and simple. All they did with the people in there was store them. The therapy was a total joke. Of course, if they actually helped them to get better then they wouldn't be able to charge them anymore. Assholes.
By the time I got out Schad was long gone. This was more than I could bear. Days before we were going to move horses out to Arapahoe Park for the racing season anyway, I took off into the woods with my mare and there I stayed for six weeks.
Honestly, had it not been for the circumstances, I think it would have been the time of my life. Really got me thinking about how much I love just living all out and free like that, and how happy my horse seemed in spite of inadequate forage, how much closer to kindred spirits I was with this animal I'd been at odds with as long as I'd had her (microcosmic of the odds I'd been at with my parents and resultant self) Got me realizing that no matter how much I love that life, I wouldn't be serving the purpose I was born for by simply abandoning the world to be a hermit dodging the Parks Patrol. And also that I want a place to come home to eventually, get out of the weather once in awhile. Got a clear picture of what I really want in this life in my head.
It was pretty late in the trip when I came to all these realizations; when I first rode out there I was running on about four days of no sleep and delusional would be putting it nicely. A number of my friends can attest to the fact that I was still a ways out of my mind. Some controversey remains both between me and them and in my own mind regarding what was real and what was hallucination. All I know for sure is that I was feeling like shit, distraught, bleak, and the only way I could see out of it was to get my man back. I can tell you for sure, from the closest thing to my right mind I've been in for a few years, that on several occassions I was able to reach him mentally or spiritually or something from 1500 miles away. When we finally spoke again he told me what all he'd been up to and I found that I already knew. He told me he'd thought and dreamed of me a time or two and it had been like I was there. The scenes he described were familiar to me. Tired of my sanity being questioned for things I knew to be real, I never told him any of this.
His plans of rekindling things with his ex had fallen through, and he made himself out to be the victim, of course. I went to Kentucky to be with him, against the warning in my gut that I should wait, and he got me a job with the leading trainer in the country. I didn't ride well. I maybe had some fear hanging on from the wreck at Arnett; I was feeling extremely insecure and chaotic about my relationship with Schad, which affected everything else; and as always, my desire to do a good job and make a good impression was so intense that it rendered me fairly useless. A lot of shit led up to us losing that gig, mainly to do with Schad irritating the boss with his tendency to try to take over and do things his own way. I think that my loyalty to him, still blind to his ways, negatively affected my reputation in the eyes of people who could potentially have taken me farther than anyone else I've ever worked with. What can I say? I'm a loyal woman. We can't help it that we all do stupid shit where men are involved. The Assmussen barn moved on to Ellis. We stayed in Lexington.
The financial disagreements started immediately. While we were still working for Assmussen, we stayed at first a Rodeway Inn, then at a week-to-week studio apartment. Even with both of us making $600/week, there was absolutely no way to justify the $280/week we were spending on the motel. At least, not to someone like me who's not counting on some unlikely winfall in order to retire some day (READ: someone who's financially responsible and plans shit out to insure the security of my future.) He was staying there on his single income before I came out, and it quickly became evident that, although he could easily afford the exorbitant rent on what he was making with a very little bit of budgeting, he was nonetheless behind.
Whenever I mentioned that he needed to take control of his spending and keep records of where his money was going he would get defensive and/or blow me off. It was unthinkable to me that a person could just spend that much money and yet have nothing to show for it. I managed to get myself out there with $300 bucks to spare, which I stashed as my getting-home-in-case-of-emergency fund. I ended up giving him this (while still owed me for the abortion fiasco, money he owes me to this day) shortly before receiving my first paycheck because he was all out of means to keep himself under shingles. The way in which he asked me if I had any money laying around indicated to me that he already knew I did. That he had been through my stuff. I can't tell you concretely what it was; something in his walking-on-eggshells tone, the way he sounded a little irritated about even having to ask, like I hadn't any right to keep it from him, like he just expected that it would be given to him if there was to be any kind of working relationship, even though I could already see that it would be left up to me to take the fall or put the failsafes in place to keep the family afloat.
One night, while at the motel, he got the brilliant idea to call up some singles hotline (he had indeed been through my things because he used the routing and account numbers from my checkbook to pay for it, unbeknownst to me) trying to find another couple to swing with. I don't know what gave him the idea that this would be okay with me. I think that he was just doing that thing that everyone does in new relationships: testing me out to see how much he could get away with. I was so hurt that he was straying already that I ended up bawling and blubbering. Unable to accept the fact that his total insensitivity had caused this, or perhaps enjoying the power he had over me, it escalated to a fight which finally ended up with his hands around my neck, trying to get me to pass out so I would stop verbally attacking him over "nothing."
I'm sure it comes as a shock to those who know me who might be reading this, that Chris, tough headstrong little shit that she is, would ever stand for such a thing from a man. I'm still fairly ashamed to admit that I didn't even fight back. I think that if I had he may very well have killed me. He remains the only person I've ever met who seems like me in that, in a fight-or-flight scenario, doesn't simply fly into a bloodthirsty rage, but enters into an actual altered state of consciousness in which you feel no pain. For this reason, he remains the only person I've ever had an altercation with who I don't think I could have taken if I'd had to. The fact that I not only stayed with with him but again begged his forgiveness for the incident is further evidence that I was out of my mind. If it was love, it was the unhealthiest kind there can ever be, but I think codependence would be a more accurate label. Either way, for the first and only time in my life, I found myself submitting to the will of a man.
After much (careful) prodding on my part, I talking him into moving to the week-to-week studio apartment, convinced that the money we would save by paying $150/week instead of $280 would put an end to our disagreements about it. After all, if we'd been able to survive before, we'd have enough left over to save now!
Wrong.
He still found a way to blow the surplus, and there was still nothing in the house to account for where it was going. I was perplexed and frustrated. As is characteristic of me, especially with my nerves being shot from the anxiety I felt trying to have some shred of adult conversation with him, pissed is more how I expressed it. The fighting continued. It finally came to a crux when money we'd set aside ahead of time specifically for when the rent came due started walking off. He took not only his half of it, but a good chunk of my half, too. I found this out the day before it was due, and several days before our next payday.
Although I'd signed for the place in my own name (apparently he had some bad blood with the landlords from a prior date and wasn't sure they'd rent to him again) when the rent was late for some reason they called him instead of me. Unbeknownst to me, he told them there was money on the nightstand, which there wasn't. When the lady went in looking for it, she saw one of my cats. This was a strictly pet free facility, another thing I'd been bugging Schad about. While at the motel, his dog had had five pupies he'd been keeping secret from the managers. My cats had been living in the truck. He'd been adamant when I insisted the motel was too expensive that this place was the one we should rent, probably because it wasn't too much of a comittment; he was perfectly content to let his dogs shit all over the house because he was afraid we'd get caught if he took them outside. Perfectly content to sneak around. Let the record state that I wasn't ok with this. I pushed relentlessly to get a place where we wouldn't constantly have this worry over our heads. But he was shiftless. Even seemed more comfortable when he was trying to get away with something than when he wasn't. Can't believe I didn't see it sooner.
We'd taken the dogs with us to work, so when the landlady came in looking for the money he'd lied about leaving, what did she see? My cat. So it was my fault we got kicked out. Nevermind the six dogs trashing the place. Nevermind the fact that she wouldn't have been in there to begin with if it wasn't for him. If I hadn't had my own pets, we wouldn't have been ordered to get out with two hours notice. What a tremendous sacrifice he made for me, letting me have my clean, quiet, lovable, non-chewing-shit-up, litter-box trained cats.
And it was my fault that he didn't get to keep one of the puppies when we finally signed a lease on a real apartment after almost a month in the biggest shithole of a motel he could find, even more expensive than the first one. Seriously, drunk Mexicans and (forgive me) niggers in every room, calling our room to proposition me; welfare moms letting their children play with beer bottles in front of the empty pool outside our room. Again hiding the animals. Again with zero help from him on the rent.
I had a bad feeling the day we signed that lease. I almost scrapped the whole idea and asked them to reevaluate whether I could afford the place on my own. I didn't think I could, and I didn't want to be alone, so I shut my mouth and signed the paper. It was so obvious. It should have been so obvious to me what would happen, given that he'd already thoroughly established a habit of not paying rent in the excruciatingly long three months I'd been out there with him. But I was so determined to make it work. Up til then I'd never given up on anything in my life. I was the conquerer, the hero of my own story, undaunted by any challenge. So a large part of it was pride, I guess. Unwilling to admit defeat though in my heart of hearts I already knew where it was going. Maybe also there was fear, not only of failure but of the fact that I was out there basically adrift from my home, my family, my friends, everything familiar to me; out of my comfort zone and therefore latched on to the only thing I thought I had: him. I signed that paper and it was all downhill.
(You mean we're not at the bottom yet?)
Nope.