The Fertilizer of Self Doubt

  Part 1

So what fueled this reluctance to see that Kelly Panowicz and Crystal Baker were up to no good?  Besides my illness and all its side effects, and the resulting vulnerabilities,  there was one more thing that set me up for this fall. That was my own self doubt. Without it floating around in the recesses of my mind, I don't think I would have been so easily manipulated.

Self doubt has always been my biggest problem. Lots of counseling helped me quell a lot of it but it seems to raise its ugly head whenever the going gets tough. It can be found muddling around somewhere in all of those times when life knocked me down and I somehow got the short end before I found my feet.

 It must come with some kind of scent because those who exploit others, like Angie Miller, Richard Galarza, Kelly Panowicz,  Crystal Baker and even my own daughter Colleen Walker, seem to know when it is there. It sure appears to be an important component to the ground such individuals must have to be able to sew the seeds to exploit others.

Over the years with the horses, I have let self doubt intimidate me for various reasons. The most obvious being I don't have the kinds of ribbons and awards many use as a measure of success but there were other sources than just my training skills. It took years for me to put those demons to rest before I could judge my abilities on their merit and my horses'  response to them.

Now with this illness and a road map to my insecurities and fears provided to that woman, Panowicz, the seeds of doubt were replanted in a brand new way. They sprouted like Jack's bean stalk, growing in outlandish proportions, feed by those old insecurities and watered by clouds of poor judgement that shrouded my normally logical mind.

So ill my days were spent longing for the relief found only in the night time's drugged sleep, I knew not how many days passed, only that days started and ended with little awareness from me of the calendar or my life speeding by.

If it wasn't for different weekend TV programming, I wouldn't have known weeks were passing by at all. The only difference in my days gauged by doctor appointments, coumadin clinic visits and those times I saw the home healthcare nurses.

Horse time was a luxury that came with a cost. I beat myself up for the conditions of my barn, my fences, and tangled manes and tails and so on and so on. My perfectionistic views exacerbated by my fears, I had been ripe for the plucking.

Amidst weeds planted by Panowicz and Baker, and allowed to grow unchecked, the new seeds planted by those strangers had difficulty finding ground. I heard their words but the thick growth provided by my age old doubts nurtured the weeds and tried to strangle out the good seed.

Afraid to confront my friend when I couldn't make sense of the incongruity, I kept her at arms length.  My other close horse friends were suffering their own health crises so they were inaccessible to me for evaluation of my herd. There were no others that came to mind for another perspective.

I was stuck with those seeds, both good and bad germinating   in the swamp that was the diminished capacity of my thinking. Trying to sort through this convoluted vegetation required more energy that my body had to give. Nearly everything I had was going into repairing my damaged body. The little left I spent trying to sort the weeds of exploitation from the seeds of honesty. It was a slow process.

What was important was that the good seeds were sown at all. It would take little pieces of information sprinkled in along the way that would slowly thin out the weeds and allow the good seeds to grow.

I will try to recreate my process in the telling because each new challenge to the distorted perspective became very important pieces to seeing my way through this mess with Kelly and Crystal. There was no piece too small for me to notice. It was just that it took me so much time to actually process it or to figure out what it meant.

All of this proof, even the strongest, most resilient  can be struck down and exploited in the blink of an eye. Thinking otherwise, only makes one vulnerable in a world gone nuts with those who would take whenever they can from the vulnerable.

I hope that in the following of this journey, the disclosures and processing of the clues, others might be spared from similar exploitations. I have found there to be a pattern that it took me some time to recognize. Hopefully, that recognition will help identify and avoid the pitfalls that got me into this mess.

The timing of these new seeds of truth could not have been more critical. Kelly Panowicz and Crystal Baker were not done with me. The harm they intended was surely mitigated by the seeds sewn by strangers.

 It may have taken me months to thoroughly trust them but those good seeds had served to provoke a questioning of the disparity between the two views. With another contact with Kelly Panowicz  coming, I was now armed with a reason to question her intent. Too bad I didn't get the bigger picture because there was already another sewing seeds of her own ready to capitalize on the weeds already growing. It was open season on the vulnerable Arabian horse farm.

To be continued.....

Little Sprouts........