Shelby Criswell
I found myself on an airplane flying to New York City and nursing a broken heart.
I’d shattered my then-girlfriend’s trust, and thus she decided to move on, but I didn’t want to let go, and there, in that plane, a little sob escaped my lips. I felt my fellow passengers’ eyes trained on me, and I tried to hold back my tears, but ultimately, inevitably, I gave up.
Embarrassed, I stared out the window. Far below, blue waves curved toward ghostly Rockaway Beach, and farther up the coastline, I could see the Manhattan skyline blending into white, wintry clouds. New York seemed a shining mirage atop the water, but my chest felt tense as I gripped the faux leather armrest. I wanted to stay up there in the clouds, not deal with the grime and noise of the city—or the dull emptiness of my apartment. I still needed this love in my life.
As if to answer my unconscious prayers, the plane started to shake violently as we hit a particularly nasty pocket of turbulence. Other passengers gasped and my stomach jumped into my throat. Would we crash into the water, mere miles from JFK? In that moment, the thought didn’t scare me. In fact, I welcomed an end to my sadness. And the plane dove as the passengers screamed. I closed my eyes and flashed back.
There, in that potential moment of death, I remembered a racehorse I had ridden many years back while acting in a Western filmed outside Santa Fe. Foolishly, I’d listed myself as an expert rider on my resume, though it had been a decade since I’d ridden. Even then, it had been a tame workhorse who walked a path along a South American beach that it could probably have navigated in its sleep. On the set of an 18th century town, however, I was introduced to a powerful horse with a burnt-flame mane and told I’d have 20 minutes to orient myself before filming.
I climbed atop the stallion, settled into his leather saddle, grabbed the reins and attempted to nudge the massive beast forward. He didn’t move at first, though I’m not sure if that was about his being young, or perhaps he sensed my insecurities. Either way, when I gently kicked his sides in encouragement, he bolted into a breakneck gallop and zeroed in on a nearby barbed wire fence. I pulled hard on the reins, but my new costar wouldn’t listen—he was only interested in that twisted, rusted, razor-sharp death before me. I closed my eyes and accepted it, when, thankfully, he stopped a few feet from my demise.
I later learned he’d been reacting to females in heat on the other side of the fence, though that was cold comfort during a subsequent scene in which the horse and I were meant to move slowly down a craggy, cactus-filled ravine. I cautiously prodded him forward, but he bolted once more. This time when I pulled on the reins, he jumped and, sensing my fear, started bucking me. I was thrown off his back and landed on the rocky soil. Perhaps miraculously, I was OK.
And I still got back on the horse, learning through trial and error that he wouldn’t heed my commands. But at last I understood him. He wanted only to run as fast as he could. To meet lady horses. He had no master, and I could only let go of trying to control him as I held on to his thick, burnt-red mane. I felt the rhythm of hooves on hard desert clay dirt, I listened to his breathing, I felt his heartbeat and I placed a hand on his powerful neck muscles. Trying to relax us both, I synced the rise and fall of my own breath with his and felt excitement, frustration, incredible willpower. He finally allowed me to ride.
The plane fell into a sort of free fall as I flashed back to that wild horse, to embracing the danger of not knowing where he’d take me had he jumped over the fence, hoping he’d land where he could be free. My own heart, still broken, shot pain through my chest, which surprisingly let me relinquish any thoughts of fear. The grief moved through my body at the speed of my breath; if I were to try and control the direction of my anguish, it would only hurt deeper. The grief tried to buck me off or, it seemed, usher me gladly toward my death, plummeting in a tube into the water just outside the city.
I listened to and felt the rhythm of my own restless spirit, and for a brief moment, as we became one, I lost any sense of separation between myself and the intangible rush of my emotions. My own heart, still broken, synced its beat to the rise and fall of my breath. I let go of control, I let go of emotions. I sighed. And in that moment, my sadness departed, and my mind was at peace.
The plane leveled off.
We landed safely.
My own heart was galloping.
I was free.
Jerome is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York
