Last week I touched a horse. This horse right here, as it happens. I put my hand on his nose and patted him. No big deal; it’s something people who live around horses do all the time, especially where I live, as there are more horses than people in my town. Only I haven’t touched or gone within five feet of a horse in 40 years, not since I was thrown off a big black nightmare some adults thought it would be cute to put me on.
I think horses are beautiful creatures (at a distance.) I take photos of them all the time (from my car or while standing behind a nice, strong, safe fence.) My daughter loves horses and has become an accomplished rider, and I take her to her lessons . . . and stay far, far away from her while she saddles and climbs on while I watch and sweat and silently pray Please God don’t let that evil beast from Hell eat my baby. Then I have to leave before I throw up.
I have a very real, very solid case of equinophobia. The last time some well-intentioned friend try to “cure” me of it by taking me into a stable, I passed out cold. And the horses know how frightened I am of them; they see me coming and their heads go up and they watch me. I can almost hear what they’re thinking: Hey, check out the fraidy-cat. Let’s mess with her.
I don’t like my phobia. I want to stop being afraid of horses. It’s stupid. But the last time my daughter’s trainer tried to lead me up to one just to stand close to it, I started shaking so much she had to hold me up with one arm or I would have fallen like old timber.
So why would someone as terrified of horses as I am touch one? Because I wasn’t thinking about it. I stopped to take a picture of a horse with unusual coloring, looked down to check my camera settings because I was shooting toward the sun, and when I looked up the horse had come over to have a look at me.
Time seemed to freeze. I didn’t think OmiGod and freak. I didn’t twitch. There was just this horse, right there, in my face, and it was about to bump me with his nose. I reached out instinctively to stop that, I think, then I just petted him like I would our dog. He made that snorty sound and turned his head so he could take a good look at me. Maybe he heard about my wimp ass from all the other horses, but he didn’t seem too impressed. That was the moment I snapped this pictue (and honestly, I don’t remember doing that at all.)
I’m pretty sure I said “Nice horsey” while I backed away a few steps, whirled around and ran back to my car. Once I jumped in and locked all the doors, then I silently freaked out. The horse watched me for a minute, got bored and went back to grazing.
It was a huge moment for me, and once I’d let myself have quiet hysterics, an important one. I hadn’t fainted. I hadn’t thrown up. I hadn’t even punched the horse (which I’ve always been horribly afraid I’d do in a situation like this.) I’d survived an up-close and personal encounter with one of my giants, and neither of us had thrown a single stone.
The first person I told was my daughter, of course. “You’ll never believe what I did today.” I didn’t even wait for her to guess. “I touched a horse.”
Just like that horse, she gave me the eye. “Are you on drugs?”
“No, and I didn’t faint or anything.” I decided not to mention my subsequent in-car freak out. “I just petted him very gently on the nose.” Then I made her swear not to tell her trainer, who is still determined to get me on a horse if it’s the last thing she ever does in this life.
The thing that is so great about this accidental aversion therapy — other than the fact that the horse didn’t bite my hand off — is that I did it on my own. Maybe not on purpose, maybe just out of reflex, but the end result was that I had a good personal experience with a horse. Unlike every other tactic other, horse-loving people have tried, this one experience has convinced me that I’m not a total wuss after all, and maybe not all horses are evil beasts from Hell who want to eat me.
This is also fortuitous in another sense. I have about six months of research to do for three books I’m writing that prominently feature horses. No, I’m not insane. One of my goals in writing these novels (other than pleasing my horse-crazy daughter) is to personally discover all the amazing and wonderful things about horses. I do think they’re beautiful, elegant creatures who add greatly to the lives of people who love them. I see how much my daughter has blossomed since she began riding, and how much confidence it’s given her.
Then there’s me — I not only hate my phobia, I resent it. Living with this kind of self-inflicted fear is not what I’m about. I may never get to the point where I can actually ride a horse (that’s the phobia talking right there) but I refuse to spend the rest of my life being this afraid of them. The only way I know to do that is to learn as much about them as I can, and keep pushing myself to familiarize myself with them and be exposed to them until I can build up enough positive, healthy experiences to overcome that one rotten experience from childhood.
I’m pretty sure this will work for me because it’s how I overcame my fear of public speaking (I went to open mike night at B&N every week for three months and read my poetry out loud. First time it was like being skinned alive. The twelfth time I felt like I could address Congress) and my aversion to spiders (wrote a SF book prominently featuring three-foot-high spiders as characters who were not villains; the research included spending time with and eventually handling a tarantula.) Neither of those dreads were as severe as my equinophobia, but I beat them, and that gives me hope.
Not every person chooses to confront their own phobias alone, nor do I recommend my existential approach as the ideal way to cope with a phobia (to get the best treatment options for any phobia, mental trauma or condition, you should always first consult with your family doctor or therapist.)
Writing about the things we fear isn’t something I think we should avoid, though. In as much as we like to write about things we love, I think it can be just as important to explore on the page things we hate or fear or dislike. Those emotions are just as valid, and expressing them in a constructive venue like writing can be the first step toward a healthy resolution. Even if that means taking a long, close look at something we’d rather avoid, I think it also helps the quality of the work to present the shadows as well as the light. That way we don’t end up writing nothing but fairytales that take place in the Village of Smiling People to whom nothing bad ever happens.
