Good Horse
Cancelled
Collingwood - Caleb Poulter Player Sponsor 2022
Magpie Service Medal
Collingwood - Josh Daicos Player Sponsor 2021
Collingwood - Tyler Brown Player Sponsor 2020
- Sep 21, 2019
- 2,311
- 9,493
- AFL Club
- Collingwood
This is the story of two horses, one good and one bad.
The good horse is called Rangi. He is a brumby. He is a good looking bastard too, probably the horse Gimp would be if he were a horse. A horse Gimp though is something too majestic and awe inspiring to contemplate.
The bad horse is me. I am not a brumby, or a Clydesdale alas. Still do love the big bastards though.
I met the good horse when I was 15. People had given up on me almost, and I had long since given up on me. I was no longer a human being. I was just whats left after 9 years of abuse, neglect, and then being smacked around the foster system like a shuttlecock losing feathers on each turn over the net. It is possible to survive what I saw, heck I was alive wasn't I? But in real ways I no longer was. Hence finding myself on a country property to see if a change in scenery could coax out something other than a capacity to survive by shutting down or by beating threats into submission with my fists.
The scenery didn't do much but against all odds a horse did. I watched him and he watched me. I noticed his uncertainty, his curiosity, and realised his reactions were a mirror of my own. Horses are prey, and they know it. They adapted by being responsive to things around them including us, constantly on guard and reassessing the threat level moment to moment, reading our body language to gauge our thoughts as an experienced horse person can with them. Its the ears mostly, by the way, when watching a horse. Sometime around eleven years of age I had become prey too, hypervigilant in response to a world of constant threat. We met in the middle, both intrigued and terrified.
Nowdays the use of equine therapy to treat PTSD and C-PTSD is comparatively established, but when I sat on a fence trying to calm myself enough so I wouldn't come across as a homicidal maniac and could encourage this big beast to come close enough to scritch his chin, it wasn't a thing. It was just one lost colt and one lost boy finding common ground. Rangi is now my horse, and if I'm alive its probably because of him as much as anything.
As the years went on though it became apparent that I was adapted to survive stuff that should kill most people, but not to thrive in a normal life like a normal person. All I could do was sleepwalk through life day to day as a suit of armor with a dead heart, pretending to be ok. I spent my school years mostly pretending to be a big dumb footy player with nothing to say. Nobody asks anything of that guy, or expects him to be anything and I could hide in the back of class and watch and laugh when they gave me s**t about how thick I was or about my Salvation Army bin wardrobe. An old habit and a hard one to break, I always find a wall and sit with my back against it, ready for anything, but from there I just cop any s**t short of violence because I know I deserve it secure in the knowledge I'm human garbage. I could be here and pretend to be a silly horse man with a mission to guard against the pony menace and an unhealthy obsession with Josh Schache and belly button lint, and the fault lines inside were lost in the jokey persona and nobody would know most days my most cherished thought was how this time I could off myself and do it right.
C-PTSD is an absolute mother*er, not just because of the tendency to flashbacks that let you experience all the worst s**t at awkward moments that makes it feel like its happening every day over and over just to keep the sense of threat real. It's because living in that reality skews all your starting assumptions about life, and all your unconscious responses. It took me a lot of years to work out all the ways my take on life was just weird. In the service of survival, I had lost what it meant to be alive. All I could do was exist at the intersection of rage and helplessness, like a trapped animal with its back against the wall knowing it would go down eventually but ready to fight anyway. Its not life, its barely even existence. I was the last man standing and I hated it; literally, in one sense. Of the six guys in my first group home in care, now three are dead, one a quadriplegic, one in prison, and me. I knew if I didn't do something my turn would come, but I didn't think I deserved anything else.
At the same time I first met the good horse though, I was just becoming used to a foster family I wouldn't have to leave. The department had admitted reality and acknowledged there was no prospect of reuniting with my mum, and I entered a different program to take me to the point I would age out at 18. It was this family who sent me to friends of theirs in the country where I sat on a fence watching this 600kg snorting beast in fascination, and where I also met a foster brother who in spite of my best attempts to drive him away, has cared about me ever since. And recently, I promised him I would try something different, not for me, but for him because in spite of what I think, he would be pretty pissed off if I were to die. I still find it hard to accept people can stay in my life, and impossible to accept I deserve them. But I have to accept the evidence of my eyes and acknowledge he seems determined to stick around.
It has not been easy, and that is also the reason for the farewell. I am dealing with stuff I never dealt with, often by having to recall directly things I have hid from for most of my life. I didn't cope well, and began to have worse flashbacks and dissociative spells. It's kind of fun sometimes losing whole weeks or months, not so much being somewhere else in the middle of a conversation. Recently, I got bad without telling anyone, got badly drunk to cope and smashed my fist through a wall and then a window. I don't remember any of that, having fled to being elsewhere in my head, only coming to when my housemate came in to find me with significant damage to my hand needing emergency surgery and a large amount of my available blood supply redistributed over the couch and floor. I was still calmly drinking whisky, and really hate that I wasted most of a bottle of Lark.
What I am these days though is pretty raw and easily set off into really bad states by unpredictable things, and social media is not a great place to be in those circumstances. As much as I have loved being here, there is stuff that pops up now and then here that just throws me for a curve now, and I know its going to be like that for a while. I hate that I am so out of control at the moment, but it's a price I am prepared to pay to try to be better. People are fond of joking about being triggered, but I guess as someone with C-PTSD I don't see the joke so well.
Also, maybe the jokey silly persona has had its day. I want to spend more time with my horse, and less time pretending to be one. More time working on being ok, and less time pretending to be ok. I want to put down roots, love and be loved and accept I am worth that, have possessions that matter to me and not feel that I have to get rid of them because bad things will happen. I want to live and not just survive. I want to feel like I am not a worthless piece of s**t who deserves nothing better. I want to be human, even if that's an impossible dream. Like barracking for Collingwood, its all about the hope. I want that and I haven't given up.
Thank you all for your comradeship, for your support, for putting up with my belly button lint sculptures, and for being part of the Magpie army. We didn't make it this year. We'll, make it 2020 then. In the meanwhile, I assume trade week will be a trip with Dave as master of ceremonies. Enjoy.
(\,,/)
Im sorry I wasnt strong enough but i never was i know that. Look after yourselves Horse.
The good horse is called Rangi. He is a brumby. He is a good looking bastard too, probably the horse Gimp would be if he were a horse. A horse Gimp though is something too majestic and awe inspiring to contemplate.
The bad horse is me. I am not a brumby, or a Clydesdale alas. Still do love the big bastards though.
I met the good horse when I was 15. People had given up on me almost, and I had long since given up on me. I was no longer a human being. I was just whats left after 9 years of abuse, neglect, and then being smacked around the foster system like a shuttlecock losing feathers on each turn over the net. It is possible to survive what I saw, heck I was alive wasn't I? But in real ways I no longer was. Hence finding myself on a country property to see if a change in scenery could coax out something other than a capacity to survive by shutting down or by beating threats into submission with my fists.
The scenery didn't do much but against all odds a horse did. I watched him and he watched me. I noticed his uncertainty, his curiosity, and realised his reactions were a mirror of my own. Horses are prey, and they know it. They adapted by being responsive to things around them including us, constantly on guard and reassessing the threat level moment to moment, reading our body language to gauge our thoughts as an experienced horse person can with them. Its the ears mostly, by the way, when watching a horse. Sometime around eleven years of age I had become prey too, hypervigilant in response to a world of constant threat. We met in the middle, both intrigued and terrified.
Nowdays the use of equine therapy to treat PTSD and C-PTSD is comparatively established, but when I sat on a fence trying to calm myself enough so I wouldn't come across as a homicidal maniac and could encourage this big beast to come close enough to scritch his chin, it wasn't a thing. It was just one lost colt and one lost boy finding common ground. Rangi is now my horse, and if I'm alive its probably because of him as much as anything.
As the years went on though it became apparent that I was adapted to survive stuff that should kill most people, but not to thrive in a normal life like a normal person. All I could do was sleepwalk through life day to day as a suit of armor with a dead heart, pretending to be ok. I spent my school years mostly pretending to be a big dumb footy player with nothing to say. Nobody asks anything of that guy, or expects him to be anything and I could hide in the back of class and watch and laugh when they gave me s**t about how thick I was or about my Salvation Army bin wardrobe. An old habit and a hard one to break, I always find a wall and sit with my back against it, ready for anything, but from there I just cop any s**t short of violence because I know I deserve it secure in the knowledge I'm human garbage. I could be here and pretend to be a silly horse man with a mission to guard against the pony menace and an unhealthy obsession with Josh Schache and belly button lint, and the fault lines inside were lost in the jokey persona and nobody would know most days my most cherished thought was how this time I could off myself and do it right.
C-PTSD is an absolute mother*er, not just because of the tendency to flashbacks that let you experience all the worst s**t at awkward moments that makes it feel like its happening every day over and over just to keep the sense of threat real. It's because living in that reality skews all your starting assumptions about life, and all your unconscious responses. It took me a lot of years to work out all the ways my take on life was just weird. In the service of survival, I had lost what it meant to be alive. All I could do was exist at the intersection of rage and helplessness, like a trapped animal with its back against the wall knowing it would go down eventually but ready to fight anyway. Its not life, its barely even existence. I was the last man standing and I hated it; literally, in one sense. Of the six guys in my first group home in care, now three are dead, one a quadriplegic, one in prison, and me. I knew if I didn't do something my turn would come, but I didn't think I deserved anything else.
At the same time I first met the good horse though, I was just becoming used to a foster family I wouldn't have to leave. The department had admitted reality and acknowledged there was no prospect of reuniting with my mum, and I entered a different program to take me to the point I would age out at 18. It was this family who sent me to friends of theirs in the country where I sat on a fence watching this 600kg snorting beast in fascination, and where I also met a foster brother who in spite of my best attempts to drive him away, has cared about me ever since. And recently, I promised him I would try something different, not for me, but for him because in spite of what I think, he would be pretty pissed off if I were to die. I still find it hard to accept people can stay in my life, and impossible to accept I deserve them. But I have to accept the evidence of my eyes and acknowledge he seems determined to stick around.
It has not been easy, and that is also the reason for the farewell. I am dealing with stuff I never dealt with, often by having to recall directly things I have hid from for most of my life. I didn't cope well, and began to have worse flashbacks and dissociative spells. It's kind of fun sometimes losing whole weeks or months, not so much being somewhere else in the middle of a conversation. Recently, I got bad without telling anyone, got badly drunk to cope and smashed my fist through a wall and then a window. I don't remember any of that, having fled to being elsewhere in my head, only coming to when my housemate came in to find me with significant damage to my hand needing emergency surgery and a large amount of my available blood supply redistributed over the couch and floor. I was still calmly drinking whisky, and really hate that I wasted most of a bottle of Lark.
What I am these days though is pretty raw and easily set off into really bad states by unpredictable things, and social media is not a great place to be in those circumstances. As much as I have loved being here, there is stuff that pops up now and then here that just throws me for a curve now, and I know its going to be like that for a while. I hate that I am so out of control at the moment, but it's a price I am prepared to pay to try to be better. People are fond of joking about being triggered, but I guess as someone with C-PTSD I don't see the joke so well.
Also, maybe the jokey silly persona has had its day. I want to spend more time with my horse, and less time pretending to be one. More time working on being ok, and less time pretending to be ok. I want to put down roots, love and be loved and accept I am worth that, have possessions that matter to me and not feel that I have to get rid of them because bad things will happen. I want to live and not just survive. I want to feel like I am not a worthless piece of s**t who deserves nothing better. I want to be human, even if that's an impossible dream. Like barracking for Collingwood, its all about the hope. I want that and I haven't given up.
Thank you all for your comradeship, for your support, for putting up with my belly button lint sculptures, and for being part of the Magpie army. We didn't make it this year. We'll, make it 2020 then. In the meanwhile, I assume trade week will be a trip with Dave as master of ceremonies. Enjoy.
(\,,/)
Im sorry I wasnt strong enough but i never was i know that. Look after yourselves Horse.
Last edited:
