So far nobody has noticed my scars or my constant checking of my wrist to see if any scars were exposed. Not like somebody cares, anyways… I tried to upload as many videos as I could on YouTube because I was still stable enough to sit in front of a camera, put on a fake smile and talk like nothing’s wrong.
The jumping competition in Glasgow was tomorrow, so I had started to train early today. So far, we’ve been filmed by Eurosport in every competition we had with other international teams like France and Italy.
Today I logged in my Twitter. There were thousands of notifications, most of them photos from my competitions and surprise photos of me untacking Stella or having “a moment” with her, you know, the typical photo of a rider and her horse touching each other’s foreheads and being super cute. I reblogged every single one of them and skipped the hate mentions. I already have my own head, thankyou. There was this tweet from a random girl that caught my attention.

@martina987: I miss @maria_mussons ’s real smiles. :( I hope you’re ok.

There was a picture of me hiding my face in Stella’s neck and I was smiling, but it was obvious to my eyes it wasn’t a real smile. How did these kids take these kind of pictures? I needed to be more careful.
The weirdest part of this tweet was the fact that the few people who marked it as favourite were, surprisely, Jack, Alex, Ruben, Vic and Austin. What the actual fuck?! I decided it was enough and logged out of Twitter and put my phone back in my backpack before jumping to conclusions. I started to go out of the bus and headed to the stalls of Horse Haven Riding School, the equestrian center we were staying at in Glasgow. Again, Stella was put in a stall and that made her kind of nervous, but this time she tried to control herself.
I prefered to put her in a paddock because if she was stressed out, she could kick and run around before the show or a class to relax and because, that way she got used to outside noises, so she wouldn’t get scared or anything and suddenly galloped in another direction whilst I was on top of her.
I tacked her up when I felt a tiny person hugging my waist. I turned around to meet a 6 year-old girl with black hair and hazel eyes. There was a red headed teenager beside her.
“Ugh, hello there” I greeted the little girl and giving both of them a smile.
“Are you María Mussons?” the little girl asked.
“Yes” I answered, she squeeled and let me go and started to jump. She turned to the teenager and pointed at me.
“She’s María! I found her!” she screamed. I felt Stella move awkwardly beside me. I patted her neck and the red head walked to me.
“Can I take a picture with you?” she asked shyly. I smiled at her.
“Yeah, sure” I hugged her and she took the picture.
“Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!” she smiled. I smiled back and the little girl turned to me.
“She has been your fan for two years now and she was really excited to see you” she explained to me. I smiled and looked at the girl, who was pulling down her sleeves vigorously. I knew what was underneath those sleeves. I walked to her and took her arm and rolled up carefully her sleeve up to reveal some cuts on her arm and wrist. I shook my head softly and frowned. How could a person do this to themselves? Same reason you do. Well, my case is different… You really think that? Well, I guess so.
I rolled down her sleeve and looked her right into her eyes. She went white and was about to cry so I pulled her into a hug. She was shorter than me, so she rested her head on my collar bone. She began to cry.
“Hey, sweetie, don’t cry. It’s okay, just listen to me” I pulled away softly, “Cutting is not the answer, it may ease you for a few seconds but it doesn’t solve anything. Trust me, I harmed myself in the past and it only taught me to push my friends away and didn’t do me any good” she stopped crying, but she started to shake a bit, “Promise me you won’t do this again. Maybe you feel like you are doing everyone a favour by harming yourself, but you’re not, not even to yourself. And when you feel like you’re not strong enough, remember you’re still here; you’ve made it throughout all these years and look at you, you’re beautiful inside and outside, so don’t give up, okay?” I gave her a big smile, a real one so she believed in me. She did. She hugged me tightly and cried a bit.
“Thankyou, really. You are my hero and I do watch all your videos, but hearing you say life it’s just…” she trailed off, smiling a bit. I gave her a smile and Stella stomped her foot on the ground. She pinned her ears forward and looked at the girl, she changed her position so she could walk to her and hug her and I pushed the girl a bit so she knew Stella wasn’t going to attack her or anything. When they hugged, Stella curled her neck around her body, like she does with me and rubbed her head against her torso.
Someone in the distance called a name I couldn’t hearproperly and the girl turned to me with sad eyes.
“I have to go” she pouted.
“Well, we’ll keep in touch then, send me the picture through Instagram or Twitter, if it’s not too much” I told her whilst she walked away with the little girl.
“I will” she waved her arm and walked away.
I turned to Stella and finished tacking up. I’m such an hypocrite.

---

I cantered to the first obstacle, jumping it easily and guided Stella to next one, and so on. There were three obstacles left. One consisted in three jumps in series, those you only have time to jump one and prepare to jump the next one straight away, and I'd already jumped one. When I landed and jumped to the second one, there was a quiet but strange noise and Stella tensed up. Things happened fast then. Stella landed and tried to canter forward and jump the next obstacle, but she tripped a bit and the noise started again. She suddenly tensed up even more and galloped to the right sideways with no warning. My legs failed and before I could react, I wasn’t on the saddle and I crashed against the jump sideways and hit the ground pretty badly. Some people working in the center rushed to me, but Stella cut them off galloping in front of them. Oriol stayed where he was a bit in shock. I saw an interviewer approach him, maybe asking him why he wasn’t coming to get me and see if I was okay. I knew his answer perfectly well.
Stella galloped fiercely to me and stopped dead on her tracks when she was three meters away from me, giving her time to stop, and walked to me.
One thing Stella never let anyone do was coming to me when I fell down. She always had to be the first one to be beside me and come pick me up. When she walked to me she always looked for three signs to know I was okay: (1) if when I fell, if I landed with my knees bended, pointing to the sky, (2) conciousness, and (3) movement. Normally she looked for the first two the most. If I didn’t land with my knees pointing up, that was a very bad sign, and she normally stood to two legs to call for help. That’s another fact about Stella and I’s relationship.
This time I did land with my knees bent, so Stella walked in front me, both her front legs to my sides and she lowered her head. I put my arms around her neck and she pulled me up. This was quicker than you think it was.
I circled Stella and without second doubt and ignoring the pain in my ribs, I jumped on her again, in front of the second jump and kicked Stella’s sides, she prepared to jump and as soon as she was ready she pinned down her ears for a second to let me know she was jumping, and jumped, then the next one and we the completed the next two obstacles without difficulties.
I cantered to the exit again and walked down the ramp on Stella when I came to solid ground, I jumped off and gave her a few pats on her neck.
I wondered if Jack saw that, but pushed the thought away when I remembered why we broke up. Broke up. That fucking hurt to say. Get used to it. I hadn’t heard about him for a while now, except that in that tweet he marked as favourite. But I hadn’t heard of Mikel either and that was a bad sign. A very bad sign.
I didn’t realize I was thinking so much until Oriol came to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“You okay? That was a pretty bad fall” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I noticed that” I said with a thick and sarcastic voice. Uh oh, here comes my retarded shock reaction. It comes in a retarded effect because I hold it back when I’m in the arena, but at some point I just have to cry and let out the shock of the fall. But it meant nothing, it was just my body's shock reaction.
Oriol smiled at me, he knew I was crying because of the shock my body had had recently, so he didn’t mind my crying. I laughed a bit and rubbed my ribs a bit.
“You think they’re broken?” Oriol asked eyeing me a bit concerned.
“Nah, just bent” I joked. This time we laughed together. “And no, not even bent. They just hurt a bit”
“You’ll have a pretty bad bruise tomorrow, then” he chuckled. Oh, equestrian “jokes” they were so funny. Sarcasm.
“You don’t say” said sarcastically, “Oriol when were you going to tell me you were a fortune-teller?” I covered my mouth dramatically. He chuckled, almost laughing.
We kept jokes like this coming until they called the positions in the final results. I stood in the seventh place. Not bad.

---

That day we, for no reason at all, had a big dinner party. We went to a restaurant called Browns where everyone ordered the children’s menu because it was lighter and after riding we are not that hungry.
I ordered a more food than anyone else because I had to give my body a bit of extra food to balance with the shock of the fall. Unfortunately, except Oriol and Ruben, people didn’t understand that.
“God, María, you’re hungry, huh?” Alex joked. I nodded a bit hesitantly, but nobody noticed.
“Are you sure that’ll enter your stomach?” Luzu teased. The rest of the meal were basically things like these, teasing and comments on how hungry I was, making me nervous. But I smiled anyways, I didn’t want anyone to be suspicious of me.
When we got to the bus everyone went to do their business. The guys went to play Slendytubbies again or whatever, Olga and Ari were checking their phones and Montse getting ready for bed.
Suddenly the food in my stomach felt heavy, but really heavy and from the full-lengthed mirror on the wall I saw a small bumb in my abdomen. Too much food.
I walked out quietly and entered the toilets of the equestrian center. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail and turned the water on. I kneeled beside the toilet bowl and stuck two fingers down my throat. I looked for a spot in my mouth that I knew would pull my food up. I tried several times until my dinner came out.
I didn’t stop until I tasted a bit of iron in my mouth and looked at my fingers. A small bit was covered in blood, not too much. I stood up and flushed the toilet and walked to the sink. There was a bit of blood coming out of my mouth. Fuck. I turned the water to the cold extreme and got some paper for my hands, but instead I them it wet and put them over my throat to slow down the bleeding. Let’s say that even with my guidelines, I didn’t have that much self-control with my food intake, so my oesophagus, at least, was a bit fucked up and delicate.
I sighed as I felt the bleeding stop and dried my neck.
I looked myself in the mirror but I couldn’t see myself anymore. I didn’t see the never-happy-enough kid I was, nor the abused girlfried, and even least I saw Jack Barakat’s girlfriend, I saw a stranger. A complete stranger, like an alien or something. I saw a nameless creature in my eyes and a monster in my face. I never really looked at myself in the mirror and saw María Mussons, I always saw a stranger I thought I’d already seen. When I was with Jack I saw someone very similiar to María Mussons, and with Mikel it was like looking at a sad stranger. But I never saw an alien or a nameless creature and that scared me shitless.
Who was I? What had I become?
A self-destructive monster, that is. And no one loves a self-destructive monster, María, no one.

Notes

Three in a day! What are you guys thinking about it so far?

Title credit: To Live And Let Go by All Time Low.

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