Face-splitting grin

Today I got to ride Pablo, Mike's Grand Prix horse, while Willig is in his second week of recovery. I was so excited and was asking around for tips, because I didn't want to embarrass myself and reveal that I actually have no idea what I'm doing. The consistent message was to relax; Pablo is so well trained that each tensing tells him to do something.
So of course this morning there was earth-shattering work news, and I was a nervous ball of tightly wound energy (ironically, what I noticed about Willig a few hours later on our trail ride), and I only got tighter knowing this was my ONE CHANCE to ride a horse like Pablo, and I was going to blow it by being the most tightly wound I can remember being.
Well, it turns out that a ride on Pablo undose the worst day of your professional life, and your breakup with your boyfriend, and also most of the unpleasantness of the last 5 - 10 - maybe even 20 years.
Hence, the face splitting grin.
It was incredible.
I could collect him by sitting smaller. I could bend him with the outside rein and hand. I could move from a collected trot to a medium trot by loosening my gut and opening my hands a bit. We did canter pirouettes. We did half passes. We did collected trot and piaffe and passage. We did medium trot. We did shoulder in and travers. We picked up the canter from the walk and collected the walk. We did flying changes!!!
And each movement - was like - divinity. I thought, and Pablo would do. Unless I was giving him weird-ass aids, like towards the end of the lesson when I got tense and started overthinking it and then couldn't get the right lead canter anymore. (Left lead? No problem. So this was also useful because Mike pointed out it was the opposite of the problem with Willig, and so it helps him pinpoint where in my body the aid is getting messed up.)
We would be doing something, and I would just be grinning and on 7th heaven, and Mike would have to say "Martha? Where are you going?" Because I was just ... riding, man. And enjoying every blissful second of it.
I could feel how to use my body to get the movement.
I could ride the movements without having to mess around and mess around.
I "got" how wiggly and twisty I am, because Pablo was like a big, giant mirror, reflecting how I push with my right leg so his haunches would swing enormous to the inside, and it was SO HARD to ride him straight, so my body is all jiggly and twisty.
It was a lot like being a kid in love with horses, and then finally, finally getting on one for the first time, and feeling like you've finally found the place you belong.
It's like the smell of the barn and the hay and horses chewing when you've had to be away for too long.
You just breathe and relax and love life and are present. I have never felt more relaxed and happy as an adult.
It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.