survive and thrive-ability ...

today has been nothing like a friday the 13th for me.

it has just been a red letter exceptionally humbling and yet fabulous day.

this morning was my first session with my trainer/exercise specialist at the gym.

i'm not new to the gym setting, but i have not exercised in a gym regularly since my stroke.

i did not stop going to the gym back then because of my stroke, because i am not a cripple! imagine me as richard nixon, shaking my fist and saying, "i am not a crook!"

i stopped going to the gym because around that time i became very anemic and very, very thin ... wispy thin, the kind of thin that can disappear.

while i remained active, still like to bike and "stuff," that too kind of fell to the wayside, most especially when i went back to college and there just wasn't time for it.

i have thought and half thought not to get back into it.

prior to bekah's wedding this summer, i worked a little harder at it and began eating better. when a "kid" is getting married, you realize a. you would like to look at least okay in your MomOfTheBride dress, and b. when it comes to anything with your kids, you want to live forever.

you just can't imagine abandoning them, not even by death, which is inevitable.

in the recent past, i've been more and more into things with regard to preventative medicine and much more "into my head," much more willing to understand that my head will never be the same, much less "bitchy" about the situation, much less stubborn, and much less "noncompliant" when it comes to neuropsych meds.

paired with that i've been at the gym a lot with mark's dad, as his transportation, as his companion, and really all around lucky to have him in my life.

since i was there anyway, i realized, "duh, now is the time to go back to the gym," but with a trainer this time, and really assessing everything, bringing in my old workout sheets from my "old gym" and really talking about myself, inside and out, and how to keep myself fit ... and not having fits.

all that being said, this is the right time. it's amazingly the right time. and my trainer/exercise specialist, kim, is the right person. i bonded with her immediately, just talking to her on days i was there with daddyRoger, and so the sign-up was easy.

and we started this morning.

the two hours were spent mostly talking and going over records, including medical ones, since it's all connected to the hospital through this gym. and yes, we had to talk about the "stupid stroke." and i was feeling proactive and empowered and all that, really not affected by it, which i have sworn to over the last seven years.

this swear is a lie.

i have my "residuals" from the "incident," and i never will be the same again. we talked about that too, and how i have gotten used to it, feel okay about it, i mean, come on that was seven years ago.

so then kim leaves her office and goes out to get the monitor thingy for my stress test portion of the assessment.

not at her desk now, and her chair pushed in, i can see beyond the bookshelf and all the self-help health books that i was gawking at while we chatted. rolled up on the floor wedged between the two bookshelves of really empowering books is a rolled up poster. all i can see on the poster in ALL CAPS is the word "STROKE."

i realize it's "just another one of those" stroke prevention/educational posters, no big deal right?!?!?

guess again.

BIG DEAL. IN ALL CAPS.

i realize, you see, at that moment (seven years after the fact of the thing that didn't "really affect me" all that much) that i'm terribly ANGRY about my stroke.

i'm writing about it now for the first time ever, though i'm sure i've alluded to it a lot. but i'm actually writing about it now, brutally honestly and for real, in a long nonfiction piece i'm calling "following May Sarton around after her stroke," which is based on her memoir "after the stroke."

even so the angry words have not come out yet. i figured they were not there, and/or why bother mentioning it since i'm so far past it, you know?!?!?

except this morning in that room i realized i'm not.

when kim came back in with the montior hookups and stuff, i pointed to the poster and i said out loud, but not in all caps, because no way am i yelling at kim, but i said, "i might have fudged a bit when we talked about the stroke and 'stuff.' i'm very angry. very, very angry."

... and then that moment, FINALLY (YES, IN ALL CAPS) just having finally said it, it started already to fade away ...