Cob Jockey: Barn Owner

About a year ago this month, I was sitting with my therapist. Still married. Not sure which way my world was spinning.

"You haven't been allowing yourself to feel your own feelings," she said. "Probably for a long time."

I considered this. 

(And I'm paraphrasing at least a couple of sessions here for the sake of the blog. Don't think I came to terms with this all at once.)

"While I think you're right," I said, "I also think it's made me very successful. In fact, it feels like society wants me to be this way. When there is work to be done, it doesn't matter how I feel about it, I just shut my brain off and get it done. And I've been rewarded for that in so many parts of my life."

"You have to allow yourself to feel though, and to process those feelings. Otherwise, if you don't master your emotions, they will master you, and you won't get any say in when and how they master you."

Slowly, I did start allowing myself to feel. I did start allowing myself to think...what do I want? Obviously the big one was that I didn't want to be married to him anymore. I hadn't, for a while, but when you skate through life not allowing your feelings to exist even inside your own head, that's the type of thing you can neatly store in the attic of your brain for years, in a dusty box that you don't even see anymore when you look at the shelf.

There were other things on that shelf. What do I want my life with horses to look like? Do I really not want kids, or did I not want kids with him? More relevant to this blog, am I really a "lifelong boarder," as I've always joked, or was it just that I couldn't imagine owning a farm with him?

Turns out, when push came to shove, I am not, in fact, a lifelong boarder. I was raised on a farm, and marrying a city kid the first time didn't take that out of me. 

Sometime in the next three years, my house will be at the top of this hill:

 

I love my historic home, but my barn owners made an offer I'd be foolish to turn down, even though it's still a dizzying amount of money for me. And with boarding getting harder and harder to find around here, if I want to stay in this city, there is no better option. Plus, it has slowly started to feel more like mine the more I managed it, loved it and cared for it the last couple years. It just felt right.

Including weeding this overgrown garden bed and subsequently getting poison ivy allllllll over. Love you too, barn.

They're in no hurry to sell, which is good, because my 133-year-old house will be, I'm sure, in no hurry to get sold, but we are in agreement that the farm will be mine as soon as I want it to be. And it feels good. I want that. There are so many things I'm still processing and learning about myself, but CobJockey: Barn Owner already feels like a comfortable hoodie on a cool spring night.

Hello, home.

Here's to new beginnings, in space, in time, and in my own head.