Livia's Tale

Some things genuinely change your whole life. It turns out the words ‘life changing experience’ aren’t actually just a phrase. My whole life changed on August 15th last year. It was the same day my entire world was destroyed. I don’t feel like I’m alive now because all the things I used to do, all the things that made me who I am, are now impossible.

It all happened in a blur; a craze of foaming mouths, snarling teeth, screaming horses that crash in my head and canter round in a frenzied mass. The hunt was braying all about me and pounding the ground until it trembled. I was trapped on the track, flung like a rag doll onto dry, broken earth from the saddle of my newest, most impressive horse. I could see its rearing russet body as it went wild with fear of the snapping hounds. Other riders thundering about me, unseeing, not noticing me as I cower below the hooves striking me… I wanted to move but pain scorched my back from where I had struck it before. I tried to avoid the feet of the fiery stallions but all I could do was cry and pray to be seen. But all eyes were on the rider-less horse at the front of the pack.
Why did no one see me? I don’t think I’ll ever be sure. I lay on the trampled ground with my eyes frozen open in terror, trying to shield my face from the falling feet and failing. I felt my nose break and my jaw snap and tasted the blood seep in my mouth. I screamed and screamed and my voice was lost in the call of the dogs. It wasn’t for what seemed like hours that they stopped… Though they say it was minutes… moments even…
Next I was in the ambulance and they tried to calm my hyperventilating body. Someone mentioned my horse and the hunt but my chest restricted again and all I knew was the panic, the fear. As we travelled I lost consciousness, only to be back under the biting feet of those hoofed beasts and to shoot back into the land of the living within the embrace of a thousand wires.
My mother was there, a case file in her hand and distracting herself with tied eyes. She smiled sadly when she caught me awake and my only option was to return it…The mask on my face meant I couldn’t talk and my arms wouldn’t move. She took my hand gently only I couldn’t feel her. I thought it was the anaesthetic. But it wasn’t.

My world died the day they had the courage to tell me that my spinal chord was completely severed from the neck down. I had no arm movement, no leg movement, nor even any feeling in my hands or shoulders. My lacrosse days were over, I would never return to run circles around the opposing teams on the field or ever again score a reverse stick goal. I’d never go riding with my family again, I’d never want to so much as see a horse again. But what made it all so much worse was that I would never feel again.
I sit and watch the rain and know I will never feel it run off my hands again. I am the girl in the wheel chair who needs help to eat and drink and go to the toilet. I am no longer me.