High and Mighty

A Homage to Women on High Horses | Final of the Letters to a Broken Heart Series

Empress Elisabeth ‘Sissi’ of Austria, unknown source

“Don’t be so high and mighty!” that’s what you used to say.

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The first man who told me to put my chin down was my boyfriend. It was about three to four weeks into the relationship, we were standing in the kitchen cooking or doing the washing up. I was in my early twenties, telling him about something exciting, something I was proud of, I remember having a spark in my throat that I wanted to spat out. It was the second serious relationship I had ever been in and I guess I thought it was a normal thing to say.

Except that I didn’t and it annoyed me. But relationships are work right? We all need to compromise a little, so that the other person likes us a bit better. So that we fit right into the space, that they carve out for us, and if the head is a couple of inches too high it needs to be pegged down a notch.

– Of course I am kidding. The problem is, he wasn’t. He felt I was being arrogant with my chin so high and did I have to use so many English words when speaking German to him? Was that really necessary? He told me that I was only holding it high because my friend was doing it as well, that I had copied her body language and he did not appreciate it. It was a small incident, a little side-heap, that unfortunately later would turn into larger ones.

At this point I would like to state that I did not “put him completely in the bin” to paraphrase a favourite sentiment a friend of mine likes to use for these situations but stayed in that relationship for a couple more years. A couple more pretty miserable years where I diluted my self-worth like pouring a bottle of champagne into the Atlantic Ocean. It was pretty much gone, when I left him on a cold January morning but I vowed something then and there. To never let that happen again. To never have a man or anyone truly undermine me in that way. To make sure that nobody was continuously hacking away on the very ground I was walking on.

In Deborah Levy’s living memoir “Real Estate” she talks about that problem in relationships: “The high horse. It was always good to see a woman on her high horse. (…) Why bother to pull a woman off her high horse? (…) I think the high horse is supposed to suggest arrogance, or superiority, but I believe (…) in this case it really meant (…) (having) a sense of her own purpose in life, that she got on with the things she wanted to do in the world, which is sometimes called agency or holding the reins of the high horse and steering it. After all, there is no point in climbing on to a high horse if you don’t know how to ride it.”

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And then I met you. Exactly a decade later.

“Don’t be so high and mighty!” that’s what you used to say.

And I had forgotten. How it felt to be loved. Or undermined.

Or did I ever really know the difference?

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There’s a story that Heather Havrilesky writes about in one of her great Ask Polly columns about an ex who on the third date was telling her how to pick up his dog’s shit. How she felt weird about it: “It was a minor thing, but I remember getting this sick feeling like What role am I auditioning for, here? If I’d paid attention to that feeling, I would’ve noticed that every step of the way, I was being primed to fit neatly into his life as a helpmate without needs or preferences.”

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People don’t like regret. But I regret people. That I chose to be with. If I could go back and choose differently I would. I can imagine better. I don’t think you have to have bad experiences. I don’t understand why some people feel so reactive when I say that. “But you wouldn’t be the person you are now. Experiences shape you.” – I’m just being honest here. If I could go eternal sunshine of the spotless mind on this, I would. Because what I have learned (now, again) is something that should have never been taken away from me in the first place:

I should have always felt loved and worthy.

It’s interesting how break ups are never just about that particular heartbreak itself though. How one heartbreak is almost always a reflection of all the heartbreaks ever had. And I guess that’s where I am right now. At the core, the pre-historic wound. Where it all started. But that’s for another day to write about.

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It’s been four months now since – almost on the day– my life as I knew it fell apart. There’s a card in the Rider-Waite Tarot, that symbolises such a sudden dismantling: The Tower. People falling out of windows, lightning strikes, flames, the roof is falling off; it’s mayhem. And it felt like mayhem. It was disorientating, devastating, disappointing but this card is also asking a question: Who wants to live in a dark and gloomy tower on a rocky cliff anyway?

And I came to terms with that. So what I’ve been doing the last four months is leaving that tower behind me, to go out into the wilderness and look for horses. High horses, the highest I can find. Because I know how to ride them.

High and mighty.

–

This essay is the final part of the Letters to a Broken Heart series, I created in September 2022 with the lovely substack writer Lachrista Greco. If you want to read all of them best to start at the beginning here.

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SHOP - Good idea to get those Christmas gifts soon!

My book of essays: THINGS I HAVE NOTICED – ESSAYS ON LEAVING / SEARCHING / FINDING

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