livieofthewater

Long post is long:

I was in a working student in high school and college for my riding instructor, who operated a small farm in SE Pennsylvania. Mostly boarding, although she taught some lessons as well. It was unpaid, basically the days I work were the days I could ride the horse I loved, and I got one free lesson a week, usually a group lesson with the other working student(s) in the same arrangement.

And my mentor emotionally abused me right from the start. Nothing I did was ever right, or good enough. There was always something wrong with my work, no matter how small the task. And we took care of between 10-18 horses, six days a week, doing either morning or evening barn work, with at least one full afternoon of farm work on a weekend day, often both weekend days. 99% of the time, the best I ever got from her was “it looks okay,” although she made sure to praise me for something once in a blue moon, so that I’d always keep striving to do it right, and continue being crushed when I didn’t. And I’d be told, usually once a day and often in a nasty tone, that I wasn’t thorough, I wasn’t careful, to be constantly asked what was wrong with me? Spoken to always in a critical, dismissive tone? Why couldn’t I just do the task I was asked to do? What was so hard about it?

Just to be clear about a few things, (1) this was a good 15 years before I was diagnosed with ADHD, which means that yes, I had trouble sometimes remembering things, but (2) I was hyperfocused always when I was there, because horses WERE my hyperfocus. I was EXTREMELY thorough. She trained me so well- one good thing to take out of all that awfulness, if nothing else. When I help out in volunteer programs or at other barns after my lessons, just because I miss working with horses every day, every person I’ve offered to help has been amazed at how cleanly I can sweep a floor and how thoroughly and quickly I can pick out a stall. I was NOT doing a bad job, working for her. Her barn was fucking SPOTLESS every day. I know I made a few mistakes, but for fuck’s sake, I was a teenager. I was a kid, a kid she wasn’t even paying, who she guilted into staying, year after year, because the horse I loved, Jack, “might not have to many years left, I know how much you love him.” 

(As a side note- I didn’t have a paying job for most of high school because I was always there. She guilted me once I did, shaming me until I arranged my schedule as much as I could around being able to come do the barn work for her almost every afternoon. A kid, who needed a job to pay for gas, to save for college. She waved off the idea when I suggested it, assuring me that my parents could pay for it. My parents weren’t rich, btw. We did okay, middle class, but we were not by any means rich. But she spent a lot of time trying to turn me against my mom, too, so. It follows. She was the person I confided my (self-edited) teenaged angst to, as much as you confide that stuff to an adult at that age, and she was very loudly against my mother, spoke very poorly of her and her parenting. As an adult now, I think back and go, who fucking does that? What the fuck?)

When you treat someone like that, when a mentor, someone you look up to, someone you’ve known for years who owns the horse you ride, who tells you how well you ride him, who teaches you lessons and is like a different person in the ring, when a mentor treats you like that so much of the time, you’re inevitably going to become convinced that you’re awful at just about everything. You start cringing at criticism. You start praying, every time you turn into the barn’s drive, that her SUV won’t be parked there and you’ll have a nice, quiet few hours without being afraid. You blame yourself, every time, when things go wrong, when you can’t be perfect. And that bleeds into the rest of your life. 

I know, because that was me. And I had no idea what was wrong. I thought I was the problem. I thought, if only I can do as well as my best friend, who was the favorite and who was rarely blamed for anything, who seemed to be able to do everything with so much less trouble. And I stayed, even after the other working students left, or were shunned, one by one. I was so loyal that I lost my best friend, when my mentor was so angry that my best friend had decided not to come back to be a working student one summer since she’d been competing all year and was burned out. My mentor was so hurt and upset and I felt so bad for her that I got mad on her behalf, and shunned my best friend right along with her. I regret that every fucking day. I miss Ash so much, even all these years later- I’ve reached out, and we’ve had tentative contact in the past, but it’s never been the same, and I don’t blame her for it. And I miss Steph, who got away earlier, although it was a horrible day, with yelling and screaming between mentor and parents and the three of us teenage girls sobbing around the corner in the back barn aisle. 

I was fucking terrified my mentor. But I wanted her approval so badly, at the same time. She made me feel like scum so many times, but then others, she treated me like a kid sister, a daughter. It was such a dichotomy. But I was sucked into the vortex, and I didn’t know how to get out. I didn’t want to. I just wanted those rare times when she’d smile and tell me I’d done a good job. Or thanked me, even rarer. I looked up to her, admired her, even as I dreaded seeing her. 

I eventually got away, but not for a long time. I was friends with her family, I nannied for her sister one summer, I kept coming back some weekends to visit my parents and offered to help out with the horses so I could see my boy. After he colicked and passed away suddenly, I didn’t even think to call her. I cringed away from the idea, just as I cringed every time I saw her, all those years, just like I was submissive and tentative every time I went to speak to her. Even though, by then, she’d taken to treating me like a “friend” instead of like an underling or a student, and she’d tell me frequently how well I’d grown up, saying it in a way that implied that she deserved the credit for it. In hindsight, I was the only minion she had left who hadn’t left her, and still came to help out when I was in PA. She didn’t want me to leave, too. She wanted me to keep doing work for her for free. I know how much of a “friend” she considered me to be.

The final, and most blatant example of her “friendship” happened the summer I nannied for her sister. I held a party, the summer before I left PA for grad school, when my mentor had gotten me a job nannying for her sister. It was a big combined party, because my sister was turning 21 and I was off to grad school, so my mom wanted to invite all our family and friends to come celebrate. Most of my high school friends had moved away from our hometown by then , so I invited the few who were still local, and then I invited my mentor and her sister and their families, all their kids. My sister had dozens of guests show up. I had 3 people show up- my three friends who were local. My mentor and her family had chosen to go to a church picnic instead. Years and years of bending over backwards for her, and she didn’t show up for free cake after telling me all 15 or so of them would definitely be there. It was extremely hurtful, and also humiliating, in front of all my family and my parents’ friends, and all of my sister’s friends. And then I went to nanny for her family’s kids again on the following Monday. 

I think I was 25 when I finally snapped, lost my patience and ended all contact with her. I lost other friends then, too, people I’d known for a decade who never saw the dark side of her, only the charm she puts on for other people. Another best friend, another Steph, who’s never spoken to me again. But there’s nothing I can do about all of that, or about her choices. I’m ashamed it took me so long to leave, but I’m glad I did.