In Charge and Stress Nightmares

April 4, 2023

Camp week 2, day 2! I'm in San Francisco today, after 2 instructors called out, 1 having been stepped on, yesterday. Yesterday I did Woodside's camp alone. Just 5 kids, 4 who showed, so it was do-able, but yeah, not exactly something I was prepared for. There's 18 kids here at San Francisco this week (17 today).

I'm so tired.

Yesterday was mostly fine. The kids were good. I usually think they are, but still. No one particularly challenging or super clingy yesterday. Devin, my more experienced kid; a pair of Asian brothers; and one little girl who sung and hummed Last Unicorn all day. So yeah, they were good. Only thing that went wrong was that Devin cantered Salem during his turn trotting. So that's not great. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful canter, and he sat it well. But he also didn't pull back to get him to walk when I asked, and Abby says it's hard to get Salem to canter. So yeah. Either it was intentional, or the kid kicked him super hard. So Abby's gonna move him to Lexi.

Abby's taking Woodside today, while I help San Francisco here. She said she ended up trying to take charge, and described basically stepping on people's toes while being annoyed at the state of this place after the amount of work she put in getting it set up, and her frustration at how out of sync they are with the horses she sent out here. She said my being more of a team player would probably be better (and take the "in charge" load off me). So yeah. That's how we got here.

I had stress nightmares last night. Felt like all last night, but I think it was just a long dream at the end of the night. As with all my nightmares right now, I was living with my parents again. I had to go out to a dinner with my parents and their friends. I was coming home from hanging out with friends, or something, and didn't have clean laundry...and mom had put clothes in my closet she required me to wear. They were a skirt and two fluffy floral print blouses that layered. Looking at them in my closet, my spirit just sank. That I was out, that I'd been honest, and that they just wanted me to be something else. Wearing the clothes, they weren't even all THAT deplorable or as fluffy as they looked on the hangers. But the absolute rejection of who I really am that they represented was horrible.

Again, it was a long dream. We went to a terrible Thai restaurant with their friends and had to wait 3 hours to not get served food, and move on to an iHop, or something. But that betrayal was what stuck, and really what it was all about.

So that's been shadowing my mind all day.