S'like, I just, don't know?

You know, I haven't felt like this in ages. I want to cry all the time. I don't cry. I rarely cry. But I want to cry all the time at the moment. WHY!? And I'm lethargic and grumpy in the mornings. Don't want to do anything. Be anything. Have anything.

Blah.

I'm not hungry either. No, that's wrong. I'm hungry, sort of. I just have no desire to eat. Food just isn't appealing to me. So its kind of really quite cruel.

And counselling. I don't like her. I'm not going back. End of story.

Okay. That's it. I had so much more to say, but now its all gone.

Bye for now, but not forever,
- CG

Today.

Today is many things. And an all round awful day.

But lets talk about Justice.

Justice, the horse who changed me. Who quite possibly saved me. You know it was a year ago today that I last laid a hand on him? It was a year ago today that I took him to the races and strapped him that first and only time. A year ago that I said goodbye. It feels like a lifetime ago, you know. But I'll never forget what one neurotic, inadequate racehorse did for me. The way he hung his head over the stall door waiting. He was always in a hurry that horse, never interested in a leisurely walk. Being with him was easily the highlight of my week. The human animal bond is something strange but wondrous. How we connect, how we recognise, how we know.

It broke my heart to walk away that cold afternoon. I spoilt him one last time, let him pick at the grass. Rugged him, hugged him and then it was all over.

I wonder about him sometimes, often. Whether he's found a new friend. Whether he's injured. Whether the world has simply given up.

It's my dream to see him again. Deep down I'm clinging to that silly little hope.

In a time before his career was doomed

Now lets talk about the rest of today. Want to hear about my day? Too bad you don't get a choice.

So this morning, before I'd even walked out the door to go to school, there were three family fights. I open my locker upon arriving to school and realise I've left all my maths books and my calculator on my floor at home. Then, being in an environment where socialising is key, I socialise like the sheep I so often pretend to be. Then Food Tech sucked. I hate Food Tech. Go die Food Tech, go die. The teacher is a mole and the students are dumb. Then its home time, and I've so been looking forward to this so I can go home and just be away from it all for a couple of hours until people come home. I trudge down the corridor tired, exhausted, resentful, hate filled. English teachers sees me, and he knows me. So he wants to know what's wrong. 

I've reached that point where there are just no words. So just let me be? Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

What a hysterically laughable suggestion that is. He was dead set determined to drag it out of me. You can guess what happened yeah? He made me cry. I kept telling myself "you are not going to cry" but it happened anyway. And I am not a crier. So it was intensely frustrating. Crying is something I do late at night when I'm alone, not in front of people. But hey, apparently I'm no longer writing this story. 

So now that I've been rail roaded into seeing the school counsellor... I was just too tired and too upset to argue my way out of this one. So please please please, can there be no space tomorrow. PLEASE!? If there is a God.... No, I'm not going there. That's low.

I so just wanted to go to sleep when I got home. But instead I had half a religion essay (who writes essays in RE!? WHO!?) to write and maths and some other stuff I obviously haven't done. Oh that's right, Food Tech. Screw that test. Bleh. 

You'll be glad to know that my maths is one third completed, and that I have drafted the introduction and two thirds of my first paragraph for my essay. Yay for me.

So yeah, bleh.

Bye for now but not forever,

- CG

Only a Fool Spends this much Time on the Great Gatsby!

And unfortunately I'm one of those fools. And what's so great about Gatsby? He's a bootlegger. Ooooooh, rebel. If this is one of America's greatest pieces of literature, I'm scared to read the other, um, 'greats'. Thank you English Literature task, thank you. Though, I have realised that my note taking is exceptionally odd. I create little mind maps all over the page and just branch and branch and branch until it appears to look like an intricate lot of spider webs.

Me? Weird? Never.

In the spirit of being me, here's a random subject change!

The Joker.

I never quite realised the full extent of this super villain's awesomeness! He is truly something extraordinary, there's simply no denying it. And whom do I have to thank for this chance to read into the Joker's exploits. My English class. I'm making a bold attempt at humanising him so we all feel sorry for him. Why don't we feel sorry for someone with a permanent smile and green hair who is relentlessly chased by some wannabe vigilante? Too far? Oh well. It's a fun assessment task and I never say that about school work!

-insert random subject change-

Not that its completely random... but I have this friend Alice who has the obsession with keytars. She tells me she's going to buy one and that no one could resist a band featuring a keytar and a ukulele.

While we're talking about Alice, I have a message for her...

ALICE!

I am insanely jealous of your wardrobe! I don't have anywhere like that to hide in my house. I just leave.

Speaking of leaving. I'm thinking about it. It's not normal the amount of fighting that happens in this house. It just goes on and on and on and on... Endlessly. I don't care what you say, I'm not a 'stupid fucking child' nor a 'lazy so and so' nor a 'fucking bitch' or anything else. The only person who says those things about me, is me. The only person that gets to hate me, IS ME. So there.

Yep.

My current regret? Choice of blade. That's it.

Bye for now but not forever,
- CG

Styrofoam

What do you do when life gets you down?

Any spare time I have, is filled with homework. So I didn't do any tonight. Now that may or may not come back to bite me tomorrow, but we'll see. I don't know what I'll say if I get pulled up th0ugh. I'm sure I'll come up with something reasonably plausible.

I gave my english teacher lip today. But I'm of the opinion that she should listen to students or just not teach. If she can't hear me, then there's clearly problems, because I am loud.
It's like, people who don't know me think I'm quiet. People who do wish I was. Indeed that is the truth. But it's interesting how different situations affect my loudness. When I'm at work, I'm fairly quiet, talk softly to the horses. But at school, I roar. It's all interesting. Maybe it's the people. Not that I'm not comfortable with the people from work. They're all loud, they like me. But.. I don't know. And this entire paragraph looks like a load of crap now. Just pointless ramble. But that's what I do right?

And, I think that things are going reasonably well because there are no new marks, and I can't remember how many days it's been. Not like a week or anything, but still a reasonable amount of space.

But wow, the styrofoam ball. I love it. Most fun I've had in ages. My poor friend totally embarrased herself when our homeroom teacher watched her chasing it though. My god we laughed.

I spose that's it, because I don't feel I should ramble on anymore tonight.

Bye for now but not forever,
- the original CG and Hope

Justice and Me

I'm not the sort of person to get into things on a deep and personal level. I do talk in this depth with a few people close to me, but even then it's not often. So today I choose to talk about the bond between me and this horse.

I'm sure some of you wonder why an animal? Why a horse, a racehorse, Justice?
The answer is simple, yet complicated.

Sometimes in life, you find there are things in life you just can't tell anybody. Sometimes you sit there and share these things with a beloved cat or dog. I share with Justice.
When I met this horse, I think he was largely misunderstood more than anything else. No one really wanted to love him and look after him. I think that's what he needed. Before I came across him, I'm fairly sure he had a history of being mean, to say the least. I haven't asked because I don't want to know. The horse I know isn't mean.
Only one other person bothered to give him attention, and to spend time with him. And that was ultimately how we bonded. I cherish our friendship, and it happened because of Justice.
When I was just working sundays, no one else would go near him, and by accident he'd be palmed off to me. I liked him that first time we went for a walk. He was an amusing character.
The day the boss noticed I was walking him, he didn't like it.
But I was attached anyway.

But now he is 'my' horse. Everyone at work has 'their' horses. He is mine. He knows it too. Even though he gets hyped up sometimes and drags me round, he doesn't mean it. He doesn't bite, I've never seen him kick anyone. He just gets a little bit over excited from time to time. But at the end of the day, Justice is a racehorse.

I suppose its knowing that something out there is happy to see you when you're around. It's nice that he nuzzles me and does cuddles. It's nice to practise the simple things in life, such as walking. He's in a rush, and sometimes I am too. And you sit back later, after the moments have finished and you wish you'd seized the chance to make the moment last, because in that moment, you realise, you were everything you wanted to be. And everything you wanted to be is gone again.
When we rush, we lose ourselves. When we slow down we are found again. We all need to slow down and smell the roses once and awhile, just to remind ourselves who we are.

Now I'm thinking and seeing how I do rush. I try and rush school, mostly because I hate it, but that rushing is hurting me in the long run. My latest report was pretty terrible, and I'm not sure how I'll go about changing it. School hurts me more than anything.
Being with Justice and with the people at work has shown me who I am again, because I slow down. I am me. I don't have to hide there.

The benefits of having an animal companion are numerous. They just listen to you, they know when things are wrong, they know when things are great, they know when to challenge you and they know when to let you be.

Who are your special friends?

Bye for now but not forever,
- the original CG and Justice

This is our Story

My name doesn't matter. The horse is Justice, but that doesn't matter either. This is our story.



In about Febuary 2008, I self harmed for the first time. Sitting here over a year later I put it down to the beginning of some very unfortunate circumstances.

I'm an avid racing fan, and am the no.1 fan of Apache Cat. The day he won the Lightning Stakes, I had to go to a wedding. To top it off, I wore a dress. I hate dresses, I think a skirt is pushing it, but I wore a dress. It started out ok the wedding. But then these to girsl caught sight of me.


In past times, I was later told, I was friends with these girls. They didn't remember me, nor did I remember them. It didn't stop them picking on me.


They laughed at me all night, threw things at me, and told people a lot of crap about me. It seemed so much worse that day. I cried. Cried because it hurt and because I'd missed a special horse win an important race.


Apache's next race was to be in two weeks time, so I focused on that.


That monday I got a birthday party invitation. Turned out that party was on the same day as Apache's next race, and his last race in Melbourne until November. When I told Mum, she got mad at me for putting the race first saying "I'm not letting a horse get in the way of a friendship". I just walked away and cried. Thinking about how Apache wasn't just a horse and that the friendship in question hadn't quite been the same for quite some time.


It was when I sat in my room that summer's afternoon that the marks first appeared on my arm.


If the other girl's at school noticed, they didn't say anything. A teacher noticed though, and he did everything.



That was the point where it all went wrong, where the demons long pushed away in my mind finally got out and everything just went to shit, for lack of a better word.

Less than a month later my grandfather died, after a four year battle with alzheimers and dementia. I remain strong in my opinion that the nursing home killed him, but thats another story.

Things went up and down constantly, I was never quite happy and my grief was often fuelled by the constant complaints from my tendons. In july the previous year a box was dropped on the back of my ankle. The box shouldnt have caused two years of problems, but it has. My ankle healed (sort of) on its own after the doctor's at the Children's Hospital simply went "Well, we don't know". But by that point my wrists were taped up, and most recently my patella tendon has gone.


Taping my wrists started 'emo' and 'self harm' rumours. They weren't far off the mark about the self harm, but I wonder "who could possibly be stupid enough to place adhesive tape over a wound?". I've never harmed my wrists in any way, shape of form.



In late august last year, I got a volunteer position in a well known racing stable. It was a turning point, somewhere where I became strictly me. I made lots of new friends, friends I'll never forget, but most importantly I met Justice here.


When I met Justice, he was just an average horse, a pretty one, but average. He didn't walk, he pranced and trotted, tucking his nose into his chest. I liked him from day one.


I walked this horse, and stood with him while he picked at the grass every sunday for two months. The sunday before his first race the foreman was alarmed to find that I was walking him. It seems Justice has a vile history, but I've never seen that side to him. Point was, Justice was behaving.


He ran 5th in that race. He got out too late to gain ground, I wasn't too disappointed, just glad he got to the track. The jockey assured us he'd win his next race. When we got home during the afternoon shift in the stable, the foreman laughed because the horse and I stood quietly side by side. That was when he truly did become 'my' horse. Everyone knows he's mine now.


At his second race, he ran second. He should of won, but he near shat himself when the eventual winner flew past him. They decided on blinkers for his next race.


Less than a week later, Justice was gone. Injured. He strained a suspensory ligament.


That hurt.



Five long months later, he came back. He still knew me, he still loved grass, he still pranced around, still was Justice. Only this time he was a gelding.



On tuesday, Justice ran second in a trial. They like him now, they think he's got a pretty good future. I like him too. I wouldn't care if he didn't have a future. But he does, and that's a bonus.

Together Justice and I are going somewhere. Justice will follow me to recovery, and I will follow him to the races.


Please check back regularly for stories about him, and stories about me, and stories about us. I think our story needs telling, but for a story to be told there needs to be an audience.


Bye for now, but not forever!