Headstrong
I win the pain game compared to my brothers. I’m pretty proud of that; I might just put it on my resume. Eli may be super flexible and amazing at everything, but I win the pain game! I can count the injuries off my hands, but I really like to retell one story in particular… I can remember it, kind of, like it was yesterday.
The day started off as a beautiful summer day, the sky was a clear shade of blue and the flowers around the barn were in full bloom as they recuperated from the heavy storm that came in the previous night. My brother, Eli, and I were in the midst of taking one of our usual twelve o’clock, summer riding lessons.
We were jumping that morning. I was on the most amazing horse in the world, Iggy, and my brother was riding his naughty yet adorable pony, Robin. The corner of the outside ring was filled with mud and I tried to avoid it as best I could. Beth, my trainer placed the jumps in the upper corner of the ring so we could ride without being deterred by the thick mud. After doing a few jumps, Beth set up another jump, a carefully measured distance from the previous one. Eli and I had no trouble riding through the double jump, and we considered it a piece of cake.
Next, Beth set up three jumps in a row, and it was fairly easy. Eli and I went through the jumps feeling satisfied with ourselves. I rode up to the first jump. Heels down, eyes up; that motto was all I needed to repeat. Iggy is as bouncy as a trampoline and is a so-called “rocket ship” when it comes to jumping, so I let him do his thing. The wind blew vigorously making Iggy speed up like he was a racehorse. Canter, Canter, stay in two-point, and the second jump is a success. Or so I thought. Iggy kept riding, yet my balance had suddenly escaped me. I lost my reins and fell onto Iggy’s neck. We were taking the third jump, and I can’t remember completing it.
How funny is it to look back on the situation and think about how Manuel, a friend at the barn, was off with my brother and teasing him about having to go home with him for the night. He told my brother how my mom had left and that he had no choice but to come home with him. I wish I could have seen his face when he pulled up in the driveway with his tractor to find my mom’s car nowhere in sight. What happened to me must have been somewhat of a shock, yet he had to stay cool. Eli is always very upset when I get hurt, but no matter how much I annoy him sometimes it’s good to know he still loves me. Everyone at the barn was playing cards and doing the splits to lighten the mood, yet I was miles away and lost in my mind…
Just a bad dream, it was all a bad dream. All I know is that I was having a bad dream; I was taking a jump and was on Iggy’s neck. I just replay the image of vivid black hair and the bright tan color of the dirt as we drive along 270. I look to the driver’s seat and my mom is driving, the sky is now gray and overcast. She looks over at me often checking my mood and movements with a wrinkle in her brow. “Mom, I just had a horrible dream,” I said with a shaky voice. She just responded, “It’s not a dream honey.” My cheeks are wet, and I can taste the salt in my mouth when I touch my tongue to my lips. I’m crying. Tears stream down my face as I repetitively say the same line over and over. I instinctively look for my phone and find it sitting next to me in the glove compartment. I snatch up my phone and press the power button. It’s Wednesday? Why is it Wednesday? That becomes a new question I intersperse with my dream rants.
I don’t remember crying, I don’t remember changing into these clothes, and I certainly don’t remember getting into the car. I’m so confused and I don’t know what’s happening to me. My mom picks up her phone. Something about not being able to go to the hospital… not an adult… why not the fire station… fire safety announcements?
We got to the fire station. Sirens can be heard blaring. There was a gurney. My dad was somewhere. I was being surrounded by questions in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. “Do you know what day it is?” I replied, “Well, I thought it was Sunday, but apparently it is Wednesday.”
I can remember getting a CAT scan in the hospital. My dad was with me, he was a biomedical engineer, and so he can take the kind of stress an injury can cause. We were in this room with perfectly square tiles for floors. There was this machine, kind of like a tunnel, but smaller than that obviously. I had to lie down on this bed and close my eyes. The bed slid into the tunnel like structure slowly and steadily. As I lied still I imagined a laser running over my body back and forth as if it was analyzing my body so I could be cloned. It felt like an eternity inside that machine, free of all the chaos and usual Harrison excitement.
After that, while sitting in a hospital bed, my mom asked me, “Do you still remember your haftorah?” And I sang the first few lines to prove to her that I could recall all my hard work. And we laughed in the center of the hospital. At the end of the day the only thing that really upset me was the fact that in the hospital my favorite bra was cut off my body and ruined forever never to be seen again, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to do anything. Not that I listened to the restricting instructions of everyone around me; I’m too headstrong. Instead, I read the whole Harry Potter series the week I was supposed to be resting.
Later, that same day, I was released from the hospital, and went home. I learned all about how I crashed and fell in the mud, which ended up breaking my helmet, and was unresponsive for minutes until someone came and helped me up. I said I was fine, but I really was not. I asked over and over the same questions. “Was I riding?” and “Is it Sunday?” I found out that Beth and Mom helped me change into my tennis clothes in the barn bathroom and then they got me into the car. I heard all about how the boys had played cards while I was at the hospital. I had blacked out and had 30 minutes of amnesia, all to block the memories of what happened; I had a severe concussion. I couldn’t go to Suburban Hospital because they only treat adults for brain trauma, and I had to ride in a fire truck all the way to another hospital a good distance away.
Whenever I fall off my horse it happens in slow motion, like you are hyper aware of everything around you. It amazes me how the brain knows how to shut itself off and block out the things that traumatize you. Some days I think about how my brother watched me crash into the ground and lay in the dirt unresponsive. How he and everyone else can remember so vividly how a beautiful day turned gloomy, and I can’t. I guess it's somewhat a metaphor for life, how each one of us should look more toward the good. Not that we should completely tune out all the bad experiences, but that when something bad happens, after the state of initial shock and avoidance it is important to move forward and change whatever may seem like the downfall of the world or of your life as you know it.
I like the pain game because it’s a competition of how much pain can you take and work through it. I don’t want to be fragile and breakable like a twig, but solid as a rock and tough enough to push past anything that may stand in my way. Although being headstrong has a negative connotation, I believe this quality will benefit me in the long run. In life we all get hurt, whether we are beaten down by our emotional or physical journey varies from person to person. I always get upset when I get hurt, and I usually deny it, but on the positive side I get bonus points for the pain game. The pain game is not about how much pain you can dish out or how strong you can pretend to be, it’s about how many setbacks you can take and still push through it.
I win the pain game compared to my brothers. I’m pretty proud of that; I might just put it on my resume. Eli may be super flexible and amazing at everything, but I win the pain game! I can count the injuries off my hands, but I really like to retell one story in particular… I can remember it, kind of, like it was yesterday.
The day started off as a beautiful summer day, the sky was a clear shade of blue and the flowers around the barn were in full bloom as they recuperated from the heavy storm that came in the previous night. My brother, Eli, and I were in the midst of taking one of our usual twelve o’clock, summer riding lessons.
We were jumping that morning. I was on the most amazing horse in the world, Iggy, and my brother was riding his naughty yet adorable pony, Robin. The corner of the outside ring was filled with mud and I tried to avoid it as best I could. Beth, my trainer placed the jumps in the upper corner of the ring so we could ride without being deterred by the thick mud. After doing a few jumps, Beth set up another jump, a carefully measured distance from the previous one. Eli and I had no trouble riding through the double jump, and we considered it a piece of cake.
Next, Beth set up three jumps in a row, and it was fairly easy. Eli and I went through the jumps feeling satisfied with ourselves. I rode up to the first jump. Heels down, eyes up; that motto was all I needed to repeat. Iggy is as bouncy as a trampoline and is a so-called “rocket ship” when it comes to jumping, so I let him do his thing. The wind blew vigorously making Iggy speed up like he was a racehorse. Canter, Canter, stay in two-point, and the second jump is a success. Or so I thought. Iggy kept riding, yet my balance had suddenly escaped me. I lost my reins and fell onto Iggy’s neck. We were taking the third jump, and I can’t remember completing it.
How funny is it to look back on the situation and think about how Manuel, a friend at the barn, was off with my brother and teasing him about having to go home with him for the night. He told my brother how my mom had left and that he had no choice but to come home with him. I wish I could have seen his face when he pulled up in the driveway with his tractor to find my mom’s car nowhere in sight. What happened to me must have been somewhat of a shock, yet he had to stay cool. Eli is always very upset when I get hurt, but no matter how much I annoy him sometimes it’s good to know he still loves me. Everyone at the barn was playing cards and doing the splits to lighten the mood, yet I was miles away and lost in my mind…
Just a bad dream, it was all a bad dream. All I know is that I was having a bad dream; I was taking a jump and was on Iggy’s neck. I just replay the image of vivid black hair and the bright tan color of the dirt as we drive along 270. I look to the driver’s seat and my mom is driving, the sky is now gray and overcast. She looks over at me often checking my mood and movements with a wrinkle in her brow. “Mom, I just had a horrible dream,” I said with a shaky voice. She just responded, “It’s not a dream honey.” My cheeks are wet, and I can taste the salt in my mouth when I touch my tongue to my lips. I’m crying. Tears stream down my face as I repetitively say the same line over and over. I instinctively look for my phone and find it sitting next to me in the glove compartment. I snatch up my phone and press the power button. It’s Wednesday? Why is it Wednesday? That becomes a new question I intersperse with my dream rants.
I don’t remember crying, I don’t remember changing into these clothes, and I certainly don’t remember getting into the car. I’m so confused and I don’t know what’s happening to me. My mom picks up her phone. Something about not being able to go to the hospital… not an adult… why not the fire station… fire safety announcements?
We got to the fire station. Sirens can be heard blaring. There was a gurney. My dad was somewhere. I was being surrounded by questions in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. “Do you know what day it is?” I replied, “Well, I thought it was Sunday, but apparently it is Wednesday.”
I can remember getting a CAT scan in the hospital. My dad was with me, he was a biomedical engineer, and so he can take the kind of stress an injury can cause. We were in this room with perfectly square tiles for floors. There was this machine, kind of like a tunnel, but smaller than that obviously. I had to lie down on this bed and close my eyes. The bed slid into the tunnel like structure slowly and steadily. As I lied still I imagined a laser running over my body back and forth as if it was analyzing my body so I could be cloned. It felt like an eternity inside that machine, free of all the chaos and usual Harrison excitement.
After that, while sitting in a hospital bed, my mom asked me, “Do you still remember your haftorah?” And I sang the first few lines to prove to her that I could recall all my hard work. And we laughed in the center of the hospital. At the end of the day the only thing that really upset me was the fact that in the hospital my favorite bra was cut off my body and ruined forever never to be seen again, and the fact that I wasn’t allowed to do anything. Not that I listened to the restricting instructions of everyone around me; I’m too headstrong. Instead, I read the whole Harry Potter series the week I was supposed to be resting.
Later, that same day, I was released from the hospital, and went home. I learned all about how I crashed and fell in the mud, which ended up breaking my helmet, and was unresponsive for minutes until someone came and helped me up. I said I was fine, but I really was not. I asked over and over the same questions. “Was I riding?” and “Is it Sunday?” I found out that Beth and Mom helped me change into my tennis clothes in the barn bathroom and then they got me into the car. I heard all about how the boys had played cards while I was at the hospital. I had blacked out and had 30 minutes of amnesia, all to block the memories of what happened; I had a severe concussion. I couldn’t go to Suburban Hospital because they only treat adults for brain trauma, and I had to ride in a fire truck all the way to another hospital a good distance away.
Whenever I fall off my horse it happens in slow motion, like you are hyper aware of everything around you. It amazes me how the brain knows how to shut itself off and block out the things that traumatize you. Some days I think about how my brother watched me crash into the ground and lay in the dirt unresponsive. How he and everyone else can remember so vividly how a beautiful day turned gloomy, and I can’t. I guess it's somewhat a metaphor for life, how each one of us should look more toward the good. Not that we should completely tune out all the bad experiences, but that when something bad happens, after the state of initial shock and avoidance it is important to move forward and change whatever may seem like the downfall of the world or of your life as you know it.
I like the pain game because it’s a competition of how much pain can you take and work through it. I don’t want to be fragile and breakable like a twig, but solid as a rock and tough enough to push past anything that may stand in my way. Although being headstrong has a negative connotation, I believe this quality will benefit me in the long run. In life we all get hurt, whether we are beaten down by our emotional or physical journey varies from person to person. I always get upset when I get hurt, and I usually deny it, but on the positive side I get bonus points for the pain game. The pain game is not about how much pain you can dish out or how strong you can pretend to be, it’s about how many setbacks you can take and still push through it.