Maybe Good

Will I Go Crazy?

The Wild Ones

Some people like horses for riding. Some people like them for racing. Some people like them for winning show prizes. Me, I like the wild ones. A chestnut mare running free through the plains, her coat gleaming in the sun, her soft mane flying in the wind; now that’s what I call beauty.

My sister liked the tamed ones, or should I say a tamed one, Westwind. She had Westwind eating out of her hand, following her around through the fields, stopping when she stopped, and starting up again when she started up. She loved that pony.

While my sister fed, washed, and curried Westwind, I sat on the sofa reading about the wild ones. I only touched a horse once. My sister convinced me to. She boosted me up into the saddle of the tamest horse in the barn and led it around the corral while I desperately clutched the reins with my hands and the horse with my legs. Around and around. I got nothing out of that experience unless you want to count a premature menstrual period.

To me, horses aren’t flesh and blood. They’re distant visions, even inspirations. In my dreams, I’m a wild horse too, the queen of the wild horses, free to go where I want and create what I want.

Both my sister and I inherited a tendency to chronic depression. My sister consoled herself by taking Prozac, an antidepressant, and riding Westwind. I tried Prozac too, and it made me feel better, but I decided not to take it anyway. I wanted to be a fiction writer, and Prozac seemed to tone down my creativity.

Then came the big blizzard of ’73. We’re not used to snow here in northern Nevada , and neither are the horses. As the winds howled death outside the barn, Westwind’s terror rose. He neighed. He bucked. He broke down the gate of his stall and charged out of the barn. My sister’s love for Westwind let her hear his whinnying and banging above the slamming of the shutters and the screeching of the wind.

“Westwind!” she shouted. She headed for the door.

“No!” Mom yelled, jumping out of her chair. But it was too late. My sister had run out into the blizzard without no coat or boots.

“Westwind! Westwind!” she cried into the merciless winds. She disappeared into the whirling, stinging, snow long before my mother could find a safety rope for her.

We never saw Westwind again. We found my sister in the spring under a melting hump of dirty snow. There she was, sprawled out on her stomach. Her right arm was stretched out ahead of her as if, for all eternity, she would still reach out for Westwind.

I missed her so bad. I finally gave up and went on Prozac myself. Forget writing! I just wanted to make it though the night.

I guess what they say about depression being a cause of cancer is true, because a couple of years later I developed breast cancer. Without Prozac, I’m not sure that I could have survived the radiation treatments. Now don’t get me wrong. The treatments themselves weren’t so bad. It was the way the radiation therapist treated me that got me down.

“Move up on the table a little,” he’d say.

“But if I do that, my butt will be right on the steel strip. Ouch! Why in God’s name is there a strip of metal right in the middle – “

“Be quiet,” he’d snap, “and stop squirming around.”

“If you were in this much pain, you’d squirm too.”

“If you don’t lie still, the radiation will hit the wrong part of your body. And you’ve been using too much gel on your breast again.”

“But if I don’t use it, my breast itches like – “

“Be quiet.”

Finally, last week, I beat the cancer. No more radiation. No more surgeries. I’ve been doing the things I love to do again, especially reading, and I just found an interesting article in the local newspaper with the title, “If Everyone Were on Prozac”. It seems the FDA just approved Prozac for kids. Kids! All I could think of was a generation of children growing up on Prozac, turning into selfish clods of complaints forever whining for the world to take care of their “needs”, forever reaching out to grab what they can never get and yet think they “deserve”, forever ignoring the potential consequences of their actions because, afterward, a Prozac pill or two will take care of everything.

Did you know that they have even given Prozac to dogs? I wonder what would have happened if Westwind had been on Prozac. Maybe he wouldn’t have busted out of his stall in the middle of that blizzard. And I’ll bet he would have been easier to tame.

I’ve decided to stop whining. I’m going to get married. I’ll marry a cowboy who rides free all day long. And I’ll never try to tame him. I’ll just ride with him, wild and happy, all over the Sierra Nevada. Then I’ll come home in the evening and write about our adventures.

Because, you know, creativity is a wild horse.

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