Part 4

 

My 7^th grade year began a new journey for me as we started homeschooling.

Homeschooling for me was freeing. I was excited to be leaving school and free from the stress that school brought, besides struggling with trying to learn, dealing with the kids and their mean, often times, cruel natures did not help when one is already traumatized with abuse.

My 5^th grade year had been especially hard for me; besides struggling with fractions, my self-esteem was nothing. I remember poking holes in my class picture till it completely disappeared.

With being homeschooled, my shyness started disappearing.

I know my grandmother had informed my mother once that I never talked with them when they were there. Living in a restaurant, we saw them at least once a week if not more often as they would stop for lunch or supper or just come down for supper.

I would just walk past them. Truth was, I probably did not say hi to anybody.

It didn't have anything to do with them personally. I just did not interact with anyone.

By this time, my dad had stopped riding bulls and he had taken up team roping. For the most part, he had gone to his team ropings by himself. We started tagging along once in a while.

Interesting enough, most people did not know my dad was even married, let alone had children.

Most were shocked that he had a child my age.

Somewhere around 15, I decided that I wanted to barrel race.

Now we did not have really great horse flesh and I knew I needed to buy a different horse.

This wasn't an easy task either, as my dad was not encouraging of this at all. He really was not encouraging of me riding his horse, or anybody riding his horse for that matter.

Everyone messed his horse up, none of us knew how to ride or work with a horse properly, according to him.

Perhaps this was my way of trying to relate to my dad.

For a girl, there is a point that they do desire to have a relationship with their father.

In a normal home, that wouldn't be too much of an issue but our home was not normal.

I never spoke to my dad. I never had a conversation with him.

He was not a father and mostly I was scared of him, I kept myself scarce when he was around.

I avoided him as much as possible and just stayed hidden which wasn't

that hard to do really.

When I was 16, my Dad did find a horse that I could buy.

Yes, I did buy my own horse. I had been working from the time I was 9 years old.

I had worked the summer in the berry fields while watching my little brother. From there I worked in the restaurant; my mom paid me a little and I collected tip money. By the time I was 12 or 13 years old I was babysitting full time as I wasn't tied to the same schedule as the public school kids, I was able to have a full time

business watching everyone's children through the winter months. I tithed my 10% and the rest went into savings. I had my own savings account. I learned to be exceptionally thrifty and do without.

I was also exceptionally independent, exceptionally being the key word.

The deal with this horse was I paid half and I worked the other half off working for him. I took care of all the feeding, watering, graining, exercising of the horse, and overseeing when the horses got trimmed and shoes and so forth.

The horse that he found “me” was a green-broke horse which basically means he had some riding but little training. When I got on that horse after we brought him home, he ran me off.

I landed partially under him and got ran over.

At this point, my dad put his saddle on the horse, informed me that I was never going to be able to handle that horse. He said that there were only three woman that he knew that were good horse woman and I wasn't going to be one of them. I was just another stupid b**** and I wasn't going to cut it.

Now, our property paralleled highway 97. We were directly across from the local general store. The post office was at the other end of the property and the library sat at the end of our property just off to the right of the post office. We were in a centralized location that everyone and their dog visited at least once a day. The saving grace was, it was a small town so that only consisted of about 5o to 60 people.

My dad is not a “quiet” guy. There is nothing quiet about him. He is loud. His voice is loud, he is big, about 6'2. When we went to a rodeo, everyone knew him, liked him, and he was the life of the rodeo, the party and wherever we went. He was the big mouth.

So, when he said something, he didn't say it quietly. It was loud and clear.

This day happened to be a Sunday afternoon, so there wasn't a lot of people around that day. It did happen that someone had stopped to pick up their mail and saw the whole thing happen. They did stop and ask about my well being, which was met with more degrading remarks about me along the lines of how people think they can handle horses but they have no learning or understanding.

The truth was, my dad had not found me a horse.

He had bought himself a horse and used my money to buy it.

I had been used.

I sat on the steps of that tack room and listened to all his degrading remarks. Later I went for a ride on another horse we had. I determined that he was going to eat every word that he spewed out of his mouth. I was not the “weak” person my mother was nor was I going to be.

He wasn't going to beat me down…..there was no way.

I was also determined that he was never going to ride that horse again.

It was my horse, I paid for it and he was going to keep his hands off it.

Not only that, I was going to make a barrel horse out of that horse.

Do or die.

Of course, I didn't tell my dad anything.
There was no way. Nobody told him anything.

I silently made my stand.

He loaded my horse up and took him to a roping school.

We also kept roping steers at the rodeo grounds at the other end of our town which we would go down there to practice roping.

My horse was a little high strung. He was not a calm horse by any means and it happened one time that I opened the chute at the wrong time, causing the horse to rear up. My dad at this point in his life also had back issues and this did not go over well. I got my butt chewed and demeaned in front of everyone for it but, you know, he never got on that horse again.

I had also started riding this horse every day. I started in a little round pen, just walking in a circle till I built my confidence enough to take him out of it, into the bigger pen. By the end of the summer I was taking him on trail rides all over the area, mainly at a walk but I was riding that horse.

I read many books on barrel racing and poured everything I had into it.

I started working the horse at a trot, moved up to a gallop. I taught him to rate and I taught him the barrels. There were many tears shed, many, many hours of prayer.

Another restraining order came along through all this. I don't remember exactly when.

I know it was before Christmas time again.

I know my dad had taken a hunting knife with a ten-inch blade to my piano.

He had also threatened my mother with the same knife.

I don't remember much about that incident. I do know it was before I got my horse.

I know that the same rules applied as the last restraining order – supposed to be gone for a year, not be on the property, etc, but it only lasted about 6 months.

Introduction
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3