I remember the day I first got on a horse.

It was three in the afternoon, and it was a few days after my birthday had passed and I had just turned eight. I don't remember the weather, nor the colour of the sky, but I do remember the smell of hay and sweat and how the entire place seemed larger than life.

Rental boots cost a dollar. Helmets were the same price.

I had climbed off with a huge, stupid smile on my face. We had done nothing more than walking around on a leash for the past forty-five minutes, but for some reason, that hadn't deterred me from wanting to do it again and again.

So I pushed through the first six lessons. Six lessons of repetition, of walking and trotting at unbearably slow speeds while the sun mocked me overhead, but somehow, I couldn't find it in me to give up. It won't turn out like my CCA, I told myself, because unlike dreading having to sit through a boring Robotics session, I looked forward to each time I was able to clamber atop a horse's back.

I learnt how to steer the horse on my own, to ride with unabashed confidence and to canter, and I learnt the taste of freedom. I learnt how to jump and I loved it, because the thrill of being able to clear such an obstacle couldn't be found anywhere else.

All too soon, riding became second nature to me. I became a regular at the arena, and the feeling of warm leather beneath me and the easy gaits of a horse was just as familiar to me as studying a subject in school. All the instructors knew me, and I remember feeling so proud, because I was the only nine-year-old in my class next to all the teenagers and adults.

But it was ruined for me when I was ten.

I'd been selected as part of a squad to compete overseas, and as the youngest member, I was exhilarated. We were given special training, and opportunities to care for the horses, and now that I look back, I wonder why ten-year-old me had felt so happy then.

Was it the prestige of being chosen? The wonder I had felt competing somewhere else? Maybe everything had gotten to my head.

Now, boots cost at least fifty dollars. Helmets cost twice that amount, and there are a million more things that you have to own and think about.

Back then, there was less thinking and more feeling. My mind wanders back to the times of childish innocence, where I could find joy just by being on a horse and when boots and helmets cost a dollar each.

Now, having fun is not enough, and I wonder why. Why must we be the best in whatever we do, no matter what? Why isn't it enough for a hobby to remain small and simple? Why must our hobbies have to be ones that have to satisfy others?

I was young at that time, and easily influenced. I went along with what my father spouted--you have to be better, you can't enjoy it unless you're good, this part is wrong--and believed it was true for a while, but all too soon "enjoyment" was turning to dread and this wasn't just a simple hobby that I could look forward to any more.

I think I knew when to give up when it started becoming a chore just to turn up at the arena. I also think I knew deep down that it wasn't my father's fault, nor my family's, because it was I who didn't have the courage to speak up and turn them down; I who had thought that I had been pressured into becoming the very best.

But I couldn't just tell my father. I was afraid of how disappointed he would be, and I was afraid of the embarrassment that would come from quitting right after I'd accomplished so much.

So I am relieved when the opportunity is given to me. I swallow and hate the way something in my heart seems to untangle itself when my father sits me down and asks if I need a break to study for PSLE.

I agree almost too quickly, and the break never ends.

Now, I have other interests, and my passion for riding has dimmed like a wave receding against dampened sand. It's never gone, just stays there in the back of my mind, almost like a scar burnt into soft tissue. I make one thing clear to my family now, before I can go through the same thing again:

Hobbies are for fun.

i have to do this for school haha- yes this is a real life experience

please excuse the bad writing www there's a word limit and i have to write in the way that the school likes because english is the only thing that pulls up my GPA

watch me fail this because my english teacher is the nasty one from sec 1 and she doesn't like me or my writing style (we were doing some practice last week and she was like "i'll highlight everything I don't like" "highlights half my paragraph")