I feel like I should be dead right now.

I honestly feel like I never want to take anything for granted again.

I took my first fall off of Lady today. It was hands down the most terrifying experience of my life, because I knew the exact moment where I completely lost control of her. It makes me angry because I know that I could have probably just pulled her up instead of trying to slow her down. Let me paint you a picture.

Falling.

You're hanging on because you have no stirrups left, and she's bolting down the arena at probably 30 miles an hour? Give or take. Pretty damn fast for a horse. You can feel yourself slipping and you're trying to regain your balance. Then your leg starts slipping over her back and you know that you're going down. This is where some would say, Oh, I'd plan for the fall. WRONG. The only thing that you can hear is pounding in your ears, the only thing that you can see is... nothing. The only thing on your mind is trying to swallow the feeling that you're about to puke.

Hitting the ground is a whole other story. Personally, I've ridden for ten years and I've never fallen off until today. I don't even remember hitting the ground, it happened so fast. My dad, who was watching, said that I hit the ground with my head first (the visor of my helmet snapped clean off and landed in the dirt some ten feet away) and then basically did a flip and landed facedown in the dirt. I just remember laying on the ground, knees in the dirt, covering my head and yelling, "I'm okay." Even though my entire body was on fire.

I didn't feel the pain full force until I went to stand and my eyes basically went black. It was like fainting, but I was still conscious. Returning to make its second attempt was the nausea, and my eyes were basically just these fuzzy things where I could see outlines but no real figures. After sitting for a little, I could see again and I had a headache, but I got back on and rode out the rest of my lesson.

Upon inspection, we learned that my helmet was actually broken, in addition to the snapped visor. A clean crack ran right from the back to the front. Goodbye helmet, I got a good six months out of you.

I know that to someone who's never fallen off a horse before, it doesn't seem like it would be that bad, but it was the scariest moment of my life. To date, anyways.