Missing: Good Attitude and Outlook on Life. Reward if Found!

Ever have a day where you get up in the morning and leave the house, just to realize your motivation and positivity are still huddled in your bed back at home, hiding under the covers from the outside world? 

Today is one of those days.

I’m watching the leaves change and the days get shorter. Horses are starting to get fuzzy and spunky. Friends are posting gorgeous pictures framed by their horse's pricked ears from the trail, from the ring, from in their paddocks where they've wiggled on bareback just to breathe their horse in. My heart aches, because I am jealous.

Okay. Jealous is probably an understatement. I am writhing with silent envy. It's an ugly emotion that I usually keep to myself. No one should feel bad or guilty for what they have or what they're getting to experience just because someone else doesn't have these things. Jealousy incites this kind of guilt, so I swallow it and placate myself with a "some day soon that will be me again".

Today? I'm incapable of that. The internal child is throwing a temper tantrum and I can't seem to bribe it into sitting down and shutting up.

I want to be cantering through the falling leaves, laughing and yelling to the girls behind me.

I want to be riding in hunt paces and organized Halloween themed trail rides and MSPCA beach rides (and I want to gait down that beach, not trot!).

I want to be snuggling into a fuzzy shoulder, because it's that perfect time of year where it's just cool enough out to enjoy your horse's warmth, but not so cold that being outside is a chore. I want that fuzzy shoulder to be special because that fuzzy shoulder is attached to a horse that means more to me than life itself.

I want to look at tack for sale and make a stupid impulse buy, just because that headstall would look absolutely perfect on my horse's head, or that cooler is just the right shade of blue to match the rest of my tack.

I want to ride and do ground work and braid manes and worry about nutrition and do endless reading on supplements and read in the grass while my horse grazes and all the other stupid little things you take for granted when you get to do them all the time.

I want to feel like I have some sort of direction and purpose in my life again, because right now, it feels pretty damn empty.

I hate that I feel this way. It's not like I don't have horses to ride and love on. I am so very grateful to my kind friends who have all but thrown their horses' reins at me, so I have a nose to kiss and a critter to ride. I am honored that they trust me with their equine better halves.

Keyword: their. I am tired of sharing. I have catch rode and leased and worked to ride my entire life. I've gotten a taste of what it's like to really and truly call a horse my own...and I'm not one to go backwards instead of forwards.

What makes the knife in my heart twist a little more is the passing thought that I should have been riding Image this fall. We should have been doing some, if not all, of these things. I woke up this morning, and in that hazy fog between sleep and consciousness, I decided to go to the barn to see him. When I fully awoke, it was a kick in the gut to remember that I can't go to the barn and have him stuff his head into my chest ever again.

I miss him. I'm well versed grieving, but I forget how sneaky heartache can be.

At the end of the day, I know that this will pass. I will find a way to come to peace with my current situation. Nothing will come of a childish hissy fit over what I can't have right now, and I'll remember that sooner rather than later.

Until then, I am crawling back in bed with my motivation and positivity, pulling the covers over my head, and hoping they decide to leave the house with me tomorrow for a better day.