A Brief Study of Fear, WTC Edition

I have this awful problem, at times, of being a huge chicken. Often, it arrives when I am riding a horse. Riding is something I love to do and WANT to do, but there are times I suddenly have fear that sort of comes out of nowhere. Maybe it is just inexperience...it is really difficult to learn to ride and learn horsemanship as an adult. The adult mind, you see, has a fantastic sense of everything that can go wrong in a particular scenario. And it can make you nuts.

We have this new cat at the barn. (I am not going to go into what happened to Previous Cat...it is a bit awful even for a non-cat-person such as myself and let’s just say it involved a coyote.) So New Cat is just learning the lay of the land. The indoor arena where we ride has boards that go up the walls about half way and there are big mirrors the rest of the way up. (So folks like me can see how cool we look on a horse and smile about how we can’t believe we actually HAVE OUR OWN to ride! WOOP!) The board area has a hollow space behind it to account for the studs or whatever they are called that hold up the whole building. In short, there is a space in the wall...and as New Cat was exploring and meow-ing at herself in the mirrors, she popped down into the space last night as I was getting on my horse. Only I didn’t see where she went down and my friend who was riding with me would not tell me where she was.

As you can only imagine, my little overworked and over-tired brain went all into overdrive as we circled and figure-eighted around the arena. I just knew that cat was going to come flying out from the wall the instant I circled past A or C. Or M. Logically, there is probably no way the cat could even get enough oomph to spring itself up and out of the wall with the velocity I visualized, even if it wanted to. However, I just knew it would pop up with a loud screech and spook the bejesus out of both me and my horse. We would all die and there would be no one to take care of my dogs. (Oh, and I probably forgot to wipe the kitchen counter so please ignore what a slob I was when you hold the after-funeral vigil and customary clean-out of the closets and drawers of my house.) Now, while my horse is more on the alert side, he is really quite a steady fellow. While he does spook at times, he is not naughty about it. More than anything, it should encourage me to keep him focused on the job at hand. It is hard to focus on the job at hand, however, when one is expecting a cat to fly out of the wall at any second. See what I mean about my awful fear problem?

I don’t really know where I am going with this...as there is no end to this particular cat story. New Cat did not, as I nervously anticipated, spring out of the wall with enough wow to spook us. The cat did not even re-appear the entire time I was at the barn. My thought is that perhaps just writing this down will become a lesson which reminds me to slowthehelldown and stop the worrying and pre-planning and anticipation as far as what will or will not happen with my horse. To sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride, wipe my counters before I leave the house, and quit being such a freak.