I was eight when I began horseback riding. I rode every weekend once or twice a week and
it was one of the only things I did that made me feel whole. I competed in shows and was not all that bad,
but I never competed outside of the schooling shows at my barn because I didn’t
have access to any other horses. By the
time I was 16, I was one of the oldest students at the riding school. The girls in my class were at the very least,
four years younger than me. Everyone
that I had grown up riding with graduated to their own horses and riding more
competitively or just dropped out from the horse community all together. I loved riding, but because of the age
difference, I didn’t relate to the girls in my class and I didn’t make any
friends at the barn.
I had a few friends in high school that I got along with and
we were all into acting and theatre. My
friend Beth and her older friend, Ame, had this idea to go audition for the
Ohio Renaissance Festival. I thought it
sounded fun, so I went along. The
casting directors gave me “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” as my audition piece
and I improvised to the best of my ability by using the entire audition space
as the cottage. They really enjoyed my
audition and I later found out that I was accepted to be a member of the
cast. I was incredibly excited.
However, there was a problem. Rehearsals ran every weekend from the spring
until summer and then the festival ran from summer until fall. That was the entire season of horseback
riding. Not wanting to skip out on my
lessons and shows, I decided against joining the cast.
One day, Beth came over to my house and we sat in my
room. We were writing a novel together
and she pulled out the character development worksheets she was using at the
Renaissance Festival for her character.
“We should use something like this to create our
characters!” she said.
I thought it was a great idea. She then told me all about the rehearsals and
how much fun she was having. She and Ame
seemed to be getting even closer. I was
jealous.
That school year, my friends started drifting away because I
was becoming more interested in goth and punk music. I hung out with a different crowd because my
other friends were busy with the Renaissance Festival. I became really close with two girls, Ashley
and Abby. We didn’t have much in common
other than our interest in music, but at that point in time, music felt like it
tied everything together.
Abby smoked and had her license. She drove me around town with the speakers
booming Marilyn Manson and KoRn and introduced me to boys that dressed like
Brandon Lee in The Crow. We had a lot of fun and got into a lot of
trouble together, but then a new word was introduced to our vocabulary.
Poseur.
Suddenly, everyone who wasn’t us was a poseur.
“His outfit is entirely from Hot Topic. Poseur,” we would say.
“She doesn’t know who Peter Murphy or Bauhaus is.”
It just kept escalating from strangers to people we knew
personally. Eventually, we used it on
each other.
Ashley had made a rainbow skirt for me to wear to a school
dance and I refused to wear it. She
became furious with me and spread rumors about me calling all the girls in our
circle poseurs. She said I called Abby a
poseur.
I sat in English class, reading over an assignment and then
a note landed on my book. It was two
pages long, front and back… and it was a list about everything that made me a
poseur. At the very top of the list was,
“You like horses. You can’t be goth or
punk because you like horses.”
Labels. In high
school, everyone has a label. I never
tried to fit in with a crowd, but I was labeled as a goth before I even knew
what goth was. I was stunned. I didn’t know I was trying to be anything or
anyone other than myself, but the girls around me started whispering and laughing
at me. They repeated the “poseur” word
over and over.
I stood up, threw the note away, looked at my teacher, and
then walked to the bathroom. I spent the
rest of class in the bathroom, crying.
For the rest of that year, I ate lunch alone and found
solace in the internet. I wrote about my
problems in blogs and let the world comment on them. I started cutting again and I didn’t care who
knew about it. Then spring was around the corner. Beth called me and I was so happy to hear her
friendly voice. She invited me to
audition for the Renaissance Festival again.
I agreed.
Once again, I was accepted and this time I decided I would
quit horseback riding. The note did not
entirely influence my decision, as I felt I was ready to move on from the riding
school anyway, but the note was definitely in my mind. During my last lesson, my mother was reading
a book on the bleachers, occasionally lifting her eyes to make sure I was doing
okay.
I watched my instructor raise the jumps. She placed a blue barrel beneath one to
distract the horse and then told me to go first. I was chosen to be the example because I had
just won a blue ribbon in the horse show the week before. My mind had been wandering from the fact that
it was my last lesson and I hadn’t even told my instructor yet to the note at
school and my lack of friends.
The horse and I cantered to the jump. I felt like my horse knew what to do as he
and I had gotten along great for the past few years, so I just let him carry
me.
Big mistake. I stayed
center, expecting lift off, but my horse darted to the right and I crashed to
the ground. I was told to stay still,
but I got up anyway to do it again. This
time, I almost fell off again and my instructor moved on.
I was disappointed with myself, but I thought it didn’t
matter because it was my last lesson. I
wouldn’t be coming back, so why bother trying again? I got off my horse, untacked him, and went
home to prepare for an entire summer of working at the Renaissance
Festival. I said, “I wanted to try
something different.”
I didn’t ride again for nine years. I am able to see how each action and decision
fit into the next event and it is one of the only things that I’ve ever done
that I regret. I wish I never stopped
riding just to have friends. The current
me wishes I could go back in time and tell me that I don’t even speak to those
people anymore, that I am back to riding as an adult and it’s the most
difficult thing to remember being good, but starting at the beginning again.
I want to use my experience to inspire kids and young adults
to not fall victim to peer pressure. I
want them to be themselves and follow their dreams. A lot of people put an emphasis on relationships
and friendships in high school, but I discovered that those relationships don’t
really matter. Don’t quit doing what you
love for other people.
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