I think this happened when I was 10 years old but anyway here's a couple things you need to know for this story to make sense
I really loved horses back then (still do, I'm just less obsessed with them now)
I was on a very high dosage of zoloft relative to my tiny gremlin body and one of the side effects of that was that it removed any sort of apprehension or ability to make rational decisions. When I got bad ideas I just immediately did it without giving it a second thought.
So anyway my siblings and I didn't know this but our mum was kind of entering a new relationship at the time, it was only their third date so she didn't want to introduce him to us just yet so in order to see him without any of us knowing yet she asked our grandma to take us with her for an afternoon to our great grandparents' cabin in the countryside. This was completely fine and we'd been there a bunch of times before and it was always pretty fun so I was fairly excited. On the way there though I spotted a herd of horses standing pretty close to the road not too far from the cabin so as soon as we got there I decided to tell my grandma that I was gonna go for a quick walk to get some fresh air (she totally knew I was gonna go find the horses lmao) and she was okay with it since I knew the area pretty well and it wasn't far away.
Anyway I get to the point where I thought I saw the horses and they aren't there. F, but what can you do? I did look around a little bit more and that's when I spotted another herd of horses (or maybe it was the same one, idk) off in the distance standing in the middle of a field.
At this point I was excited again and while I was a little hesitant to leave the road I figured it would just be a quick trip back and forth so no real harm done. Besides, it's a field, how hard can it be to find the road again?
Apparently very hard because once I was about halfway across the field to where I'd seen the horses I looked up (I'd had to keep my head down for most of the trip so I wouldn't trip since the ground was very uneven) and suddenly the horses weren't there anymore. At this point I admit defeat and turn around except as I'm walking back I'm not finding the road either. I was totally fucked and I knew it.
After thinking it over for a bit I decided to just pick a direction and walk until I reach a road. Idk how long I walked for but I did eventually find one but I had no clue where I was and there was very little traffic around so I figured I'd just walk along the road for a bit until, idk, something happened. After a while I came to a stop and wouldn't you know it, there was a herd of horses there.
I had already accepted that I had no clue where the fuck I was and help probably would not be coming any time soon (in my child brain I was like "ok so it takes 24 hours for someone to officially be declared missing so I guess I'll just hang around here for a day and hope someone finds me sooner rather than later") I also figured I would be easier to find if I stopped moving so I decided that the best course of action was to just stay there with the horses.
It wasn't too bad all things considered, time did go by a bit quicker when I had the horses there for entertainment. They were very calm and gentle and I even laid down to rest with them for a while. I did spot a building in the distance at some point and decided to make my way towards it hoping to maybe find someone there or at least get some shelter.
Unfortunately since there was a lot of wetland around this area (the horses were fenced off from it) I did fall into a mire and had both of my legs submerged in mud up to my knees. This was when my survival instincts really kicked in since I knew damn well that past a certain point I wasn't getting back out of there alive. Thankfully there was some tall grass surrounding it that was much more firmly rooted so that gave me something to grab onto and pull myself free. (Idk how I managed to not panic tbh, I was essentially facing everyone's childhood fear of falling into quicksand. I did lose both of my shoes in the process of getting myself out but considering I had just avoided possibly the worst way of dying out in the wilderness I was okay with that)
After that I made my way back to the horses and just kinda chilled out waiting for someone to rescue me. Eventually a truck driver spotted me and asked if I was the missing kid on the radio (I, stupidly, went "I don't think I've been declared missing yet" as if there was some other missing child matching my description in the area. He knew my name though so I got in the truck and he drove me to the next farm.) After talking for a bit he told me those were his wife's horses and I told him they were very well tamed. I remember he paused for a bit and then said "none of them are tamed yet"
Eventually the police picked me up and drove me to our cabin, where I was met with pretty much my entire extended family anxiously standing outside. This was how I met my step dad after he had accompanied my mum there for support, covered in mud and stepping out of a police car after apparently having dropped off the face of the earth for five hours.
After this my zoloft dosage was significantly lowered by my psychiatrist. I also got cool new shoes (they were purple)
Also turns out you are officially declared missing wayyyy faster if you are a small child and at risk of, idk, falling into a mire or something.
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