Chapter 3: Didn't See That Coming

Welcome to Michaela Mae's Audiobook Experience for The Barn off of Colfax Lane: an unfiltered memoir about sexual assault and the mixed feelings that come with it. 

In this book Michaela tells her story of the childhood sexual abuse she experienced when she was 12-years-old while taking horse back riding lessons from a horse trainer in Oregon.

BOOK SUMMARY:

I was 12 years old the first time my horse trainer grabbed my left boob and asked me if I had ever had sex. I'm not sure what caught me off guard the most: his question or the fact a 79-year-old man had his hand firmly cusped around my boob while asking me, a 12-year-old, if I had ever had sex. I've blocked out a lot of that season from my mind, but that first day sticks out clearer than the rest. Is it because of the shock? Is it because I hadn't fully remembered my pro-dissociation skills yet?

I have no f*cking clue, but I do remember the green-striped tank top and the dark navy blue jeans I had on that day. I remember watching his lips ooze as the words, "Have you ever had sex?" spilled out of them. I remember the blank stare in his eyes, the black specks of chew stuck in his teeth, and the way his cheeks met his chin like a pillow shoved under fitted sheets.

My eyes left my left boob, flung around the barn, and up to his face. The light coming in from the barn door behind him lit his back, but darkened his face so his face looked as dark as the blank stare in his eyes. My brain raced for answers that made sense. Hell, it searched for a question that made sense too. "No, of course not. Wait, why is this happening? How do I answer? Do I answer? Am I dreaming?" I couldn't speak, so I looked up at him blankly then he turned and walked away.

LINKS + CONTACT:

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For inquiries or to connect with Michaela directly, email michaela@michaelamae.com

© 2024 MP Media. All rights reserved.

Narrated by Author Michaela Mae.

Keywords: survivor memoir, childhood sexual abuse memoir, childhood sexual abuse, trauma memoir, healing memoir, horse trainer abuse, equestrian community, read by the author, audiobook, Oregon, Michaela Mae

Transcript

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Chapter 3 Didn't See That Coming 12 year old Michaela. Another feeling appeared this summer that I didn't see coming. I hate riding Vegas. Todd doesn't like him either, which doesn't help me much, but he's also not wrong. This horse doesn't want to move, and I'm not learning much on a horse I can barely get to walk. I take the same riding lesson each day since Vegas will hardly walk, let alone do the maneuvers I watched Todd do on his other training horses, and I would also like to learn to do on Vegas as well. Todd started a horse four months after he started Vegas, and she's already further along than him. The only thing that's improving is the strength in my legs from trying to keep Vegas in a forward motion the entire ride, but I could also argue the newfound strength in my legs is a result from walking up to grass high as high as my waist when we change pipe each morning and each night. I feel defeated with Vegas, but I also don't want to give up on him, so progress or not, I take my lesson on him each day and pray he gets better at some point. He finally did a counter arc the other day, and I'm still stunned since I deemed that maneuver mission impossible for Mr. Vegas. I tried the maneuver for weeks before he finally figured it out. I would go down the wall and fail the maneuver lesson after lesson. Then one day we walked down the wall, I lowered my inside rein, raised my outside rein, took my inside leg off, and put my outside leg against his side, and voila, he did it. Yay Vegas. Then the weekend after Vegas finally figured out his maneuvers, something else happened that I didn't see coming. Todd bought a horse. I walked into the barn one Monday morning and there she stood. I'm always the first person to notice when something in the barn has changed, and I notice even sooner when the change includes one of the most beautiful horses I've ever seen. I had never seen anything like her before in my life. Her dark bay coat didn't have a speck of dirt on it, every muscle in her body stirred out stood out under the dim barn lights, and her mane and tail sat in the most flawless braid, without any loose hair peeking out. This horse didn't just shine, she glistened. Todd and I have a deal that I have all the horses fed before he gets down to the barn in the morning so he can start working the horses right away. I startled myself when I realized how distracted I had become with this new horse and more time had gone by than I thought. Since summer had arrived, the number of horses in Todd's training program had increased again, and my heart rate increased as I rushed to grab the wheelbarrow and attempted to get all the horses fed before Todd got to the barn. I hate getting in trouble, and I cut it close that morning. When Todd got to the barn, I only had two horses left to feed. I said my good morning greetings as quickly as possible so I could start asking questions about the new horse. Who is the new horse? was my first question. She's mine, he replied. She's yours. His response shocked me. When I started taking lessons from Todd, he told me he would never own a horse again. Yep, I bought her this weekend in California. Do you want to see me ride her? She's a Cadillac. I can't remember if I answered his question or if my eyes just grew big and I nodded like a speechless idiot. The mare made me both curious and at a loss for words, so either option is plausible. When I watched Todd ride this mare for the first time, I realized I had witnessed perfection in horse form. Even when I know nothing about something, a sport, a hobby, art, craft, anything, really, and have never seen it done before, I can always tell when someone is good at what they're doing or if they're terrible at it. I don't know why I know the difference, even when I watch something that is completely new to me, but I do. I can remember being able to see talent or lack of talent since I first took swimming lessons as a kid. I was still in diapers, but once I got old enough to form an opinion, I could tell who could swim well or I could tell who could swim well and who would have their arm floats on in the kiddie pool for a very long time. I never wanted to be the kid stuck in the kiddie pool in her arm floats, so I pulled mine off early against the instructor's advice. I told the instructor I didn't like them, and they hurt my arms. Most people won't argue when you tell them something hurts. But the truth is I would have drowned before I became one of the kids that got stuck in the kiddie pool with my arm floats on longer than necessary. Even at three or four years old, I knew there had to be a quicker way out of the kiddie pool, so I removed all my flotation devices as soon as possible. And if I recall correctly, I became one of the youngest kids to swim unassisted in my class. I think that means I did something right. The day I watched Todd ride this mare for the first time, I just I saw just how much talent both of them had. Plus, Todd did show off a bit, while in this spin maneuver looking thing, Todd wrapped his reins around the horn of the saddle and completed the maneuver with his arms crossed in front of his body. I had no idea what I had just watched, but I was memorized mesmerized just by how good the two of them were. Watching Todd and his mare also made me realize that riding Vegas had turned me into the kid stuck in the kiddie pool with her arm floats firmly around her biceps. I wanted out of that darn kiddie pool and I wanted the darn darn arm floats off of my arms. I committed to learning everything I could from Todd and the new mare, so I studied their rides each time Todd rode her. For time's sake, I usually clean stalls while Todd rides the training horses, but when he rides this mare, I make sure I'm standing at the arena gate studying every move, and I become more mesmerized with every ride. I still want to pinch myself because I can't believe I get to ride at a barn with so much talent. It makes me feel like all my dreams have come true. There's just one thing I don't like the mare's name Tivio or as I would say it, disgusting. I mean, I get why he calls her Tivio. She's a granddaughter of some horse named Poco Tivio, and apparently it's very cool and very rare to have a horse this closely related to Poco Tivio. But Tivio? It's not cool to call such a beautiful mare such an ugly name. The first time he told me her name, I thought he spoke in a foreign language. And besides that, he didn't even know her name when I originally asked him about it. He picked her name because of her grandfather, and the name Tivio is connected to something called her registered name, but I don't understand all the paperwork mumbo jumbo because my dad doesn't care if his horses have papers, so I never learned about them. However, I do find it odd that he didn't ask her name when he bought her. I find it especially weird because I always ask what a horse's name is before I even pet them for the first time. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. Although when I think about it, the name thing shouldn't fully surprise me, because I have been riding horses with Todd for over six months and he still doesn't stay say my name properly. He puts a B at the end of my name so it sounds like mu Klub instead of mu Klu. I figured it's because he's old, so I don't say anything about it, but I do say to Tivio every day when I pet her in her stall that if she were my horse, I would give her a prettier name. Then the third thing happened this summer that I didn't see coming. Todd asked me if I wanted to start riding Tivio. Riding R-I-D-N-G. I grew up riding mules, which is code word for I grew up riding animals without power steering. This mare not only has power steering, but she also has motion detected steering. She turns, stops, or backs up with just the slightest movement in my body. She's the most expensive horse I have ever looked at, let alone sat on, and she also has had more training done with her in one day than I probably have had done with me in my entire life. I didn't know a horse like her existed, and with her showing me how much she knows, she also shows me how much I don't know. In some lessons I can barely get her to walk forward because if I move the slightest bit, she feels it and adjusts her maneuvers based on how I'm moving when I'm on her. She's supposed to do that. It's me who's not supposed to move around on her like there's an earthquake under my butt. Then a fourth thing happened this summer that I didn't see coming, and when it came, I thought my world had collapsed, but then it got even better than I could have imagined. Todd got Tivio out of her stall one day when we had both already ridden her for the day. I found it odd when he did it because it broke routine, and Todd has the strictest routine of any person I have ever seen. He eats the same thing every day, steak and eggs in the morning, a sandwich from the store at lunch, and I'm not sure about dinner because I've only been around him for breakfast and lunch. He wears the same clothes for a week straight, changes his outfit for the week every Monday, and then does laundry once a month when he's out of clothes. We complete barn tours in the same routine each day, and ride horses in the same order each day. The pattern we ride horses in is also the same each day, with slight variations depending on the horse's skill level. So for him to break routine and grab Tivio out of her stall after she had already been ridden for the day was very strange. Why are you grabbing her out of her stall? I asked. Someone is coming to look at her, he answered. Oh, to take lessons, I hoped. No, to buy her, he said emotionless. Q the collapse of my current reality. I'm slightly dramatic thanks to some plays I acted in during element during elementary school, but this would be the scene in a movie where my eyes would get really big as the world zooms around me and my head warps in on itself. I didn't realize how much Tivio meant to me until the thought of losing her became a reality. I didn't know how to convince my dad to buy this horse, but I knew I had to talk him into buying her no matter what it took. I couldn't cry on command like my sister could. But maybe she could give me some crying lessons before Dad and I talked about buying Tivio. It's true. I can't cry on command, but when Dad picked me up and asked me how lessons were that day, the tears came without consent. As the story goes, I wanted a horse. My dad didn't want a horse, so we compromised and got the horse. I still can't believe this beautiful mare is my horse, and thank the Lord for it too, because the lady that came to look at her was a complete meanie head. She had nothing good to say about her, and it blew my mind when she couldn't see the beauty in this horse. I really wanted to stick my tongue out her and tackle her tackle her when she said, Well she's not put together very well, is she? Well, neither are you, meanie head. I'm so thankful for Todd because he had a major say on whether tet dad bought Tivio for me or not. He explained to my dad that she could teach me more than Vegas could, and she already had about twenty five thousand dollars of training put in her, so sixty five hundred dollars was a steal of a deal for a horse like her. Dad decided to trade a younger horse he had bought from Todd as part of the down payment. He traded in the horse, put another twenty five hundred dollars down, and agreed to make five hundred dollars in payments until the remaining two thousand dollars was paid off. In four months, Tivia would be mine all mine. My dad had put the money to pay er my dad had the money to pay for in total, I knew that, and so did everyone else, but if my dad could hang on to a dollar for a little bit longer, he will. Once the deal was made, I had one priority left. Get this mare a new name. I don't usually believe in renaming horses, but to be fair, Todd didn't know her name when he bought her, and that helped me justify the name change for me, myself, and I. When I received her papers from Todd, I saw her full registered name was Tivio's Miss Pepper. I thought about calling her Missy, but that felt too unoriginal for a mare like her, so I decided to call her Pepper, but I only call her Pepper when it's just the two of us together. Todd can't even say my name right, so I don't want to confuse him even more by changing her name. So for now, it's Pepper and I's little secret.