Sylvia Harris - Long Shot - My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me

My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me

This book is dedicated in fond farewell, and loving memory,

to my mother, Evaliene Fontenette Harris,

U.S. Army veteran.

(16.12.1943–08.10.2010)

ONE DAY

All the flowers that I’ve picked …

all the shells from the sea …

can never ever equal the love you gave to me.

Now as I stand upon this empty shore …

I’m wishing for your arms …

they can’t hold me anymore.

All the scrapes and bruises …

the long teary nights …

you comforted and guided me …

taught me … made me …

stand up and fight …

Now you can rest your tired and weary soul.

Your spirit soars with the sky …

you have stars to hold …

When the wind whispers, and the moon guides my way …

I’ll fall to my knees asking your Angel wings …

to lift me up … be with you … and pray …

Together again … ONE DAY.

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

The Race Hawthorne Race Course

The Start Santa Rosa, California

Furlong One Santa Rosa, California

Furlong Two Los Angeles, California

Furlong Three Virginia

Furlong Four Orlando, Florida

Furlong Five Ocala, Florida

Furlong Six The OBS

Furlong Seven Quail Roost II

Furlong Eight Mr. H

Furlong Nine Breezing

Furlong Ten Arlington Park and Hawthorne Race Course

The Finish

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

I am small in stature, barely an inch above five feet. But I can put up a good fight, something I’ve been doing all my life, often with family, friends, and strangers but mostly with myself. I am bipolar and have struggled with it since it surfaced shortly after high school. I ascend to heights of frenetic energy and confidence only to plummet to hellish depths of madness, guided by unseen voices and terrifying hallucinations. Imagine you’re watching a DVD or a video, and you pick up the remote and punch fast-forward. Suddenly, those images flash by in milliseconds. The “screen” of my mind operates in the same fashion. It is in manic phase when I sketch voluminous drawings of people, places, horses. And I’ll sketch them on anything: paper, napkins, walls, wherever I can create. If I’m not sketching, I’m writing volumes and volumes of poetry or prose with unchained thoughts in my journal, until finally I crash into days of sleep. It is exhilarating while in it, but exhausting coming out of it. More than once I’ve found myself within the confines of mental institutions, and many more times I’ve gone off the deep end after tottering on the edge of reality and fantasy, unable to maintain my balance against a whirlwind of raging emotions.

I’m forty-three years old, but my life feels twice that. People say I am an angry woman. I am. When you’ve had to fight through so many things, it’s hard not to be. I have been hungry, cold, abused physically, tormented emotionally, homeless, and frequently out of control. But I’ve also, at times, lived a seemingly quite normal life with my three children and their father. And against all odds, at forty years old, I became the first African American woman in Chicago racing history to win a race and only the second in U.S. history.

I continue to struggle with being bipolar and always will. But psychotropic medicines, which have not always been available to me, spiritualism, which in my case happens to be Buddhism, and—most important—my love of horses keep me from looking at life as one continuous battle. My life has been a race to outrun the disease that attempts to consume me. To that point, I tell my story in parallel to my biggest race, that cold day in December 2007.

I haven’t always been able to live life on my terms, but I’m optimistic I’ll get there—even if it is a long shot.

Sylvia Harris

July 2010

Hawthorne Race Course

Cicero, Illinois

December 1, 2007

In an empty stall, at a makeshift altar, I close my eyes and begin my Buddhist chant, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo: “Devotion to the teaching of the mystic law of the universe,” or even more loosely translated, “Devotion to cause and effect.” I chant to quiet my mind in a way that lithium or Haldol cannot. Then I get dressed and head to the paddock.

December in Chicago is brutal. On this snowy Thursday evening, a cold front from Canada is blowing snow and ice into the city, creating dangerous conditions. As I pass through the backstretch, also known as the backside, an area of stables and living quarters for the people who call the track home, little ice pellets stab me in the face, but I don’t really feel it. My mind is on Peg. We have a lot in common, Peg and me: a broken horse and his broken rider. He was sired by Fusaichi Pegasus, who won the Kentucky Derby in 2000, a promising mount that never materialized, and I was the all-American girl from Santa Rosa who had long ago lost her way.

Wildwood Pegasus is a four-year-old gelding who has lost his spirit, but I understand him. When you spend time in and out of mental institutions, questioning your reality and making a mess out of your life, your spirit takes a beating that no anti-depressant or mood stabilizer can fix. Pegasus is arthritic, with a bum right leg shattered during a practice run when he was a promising two-year-old. Together, we are a bad bet. Entertaining, maybe, but a bad bet nonetheless.

When I reach the paddock, he is waiting for me. Jockeys can be superstitious. Many have rituals before or after every race. British jockey Graham Thorner wore the same underwear for every race he rode in after winning the Grand National in 1972. They got so old and frayed that he would wear a new pair over the old ones until he ended his career. Garrett Gomez, one of horse racing’s biggest prizewinners, makes sure he steps out of bed with his right foot first on race day; and top jockey Ramon Dominguez reads a quote from Booker T. Washington that’s taped to his locker before every race: “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” Me, I have two rituals. I chant, and then, before I mount the horse, I breathe him in. I know it sounds a little Horse Whisperer-ish, but when I breathe in a horse, it’s as if we are kindred souls. We are one.

I hold Peg’s face in my hands and press my own to his, to breathe my baby in. So there we are, Peg and me, nose to nose; soul to soul. “Peg, my beautiful Peg,” I said. “Tonight, it’s you … you show me. I’m just along for the ride.”