Becoming a Warrior and Basking in my PTSD...Part XVI

Enough with the deafness already. I assume I have already convinced everyone of its perks so let’s move onto another chapter of this drama.

After giving birth to the baby and waiting the mandated six weeks quarantine period, I gradually began swimming and walking. My balance was still that of a sloppy drunken sailor and I needed to help my brain with all the re-wiring. My face was still quite asymmetrical and my left eye would become so irritated that I would frequently need to patch it thus, resembling a pirate. Walking around, driving and trying to exercise with one eye completely covered was quite a challenging feat. I do not recommend it.

I had become a warrior and this time an angry one! Now that I was supposedly coming out of this delicate stage vis-à-vis my brain surgery and c-section, I was going to extremes to prove that I was the same bad-ass woman as before. I worked very hard to recover my equilibrium by way of yoga, stretching, swimming, strength training, cycling, walking and running. I was obsessed and would not listen to reason about when enough was enough. I ignored all sound advice about my target heart-rate and all practical wisdom any normal pragmatic human being would take into consideration after having been through 2 operations and a family tragedy within a time span of a few months. I chose to disregard it all.

It was so good to be freeing myself from my sickly and fragile body. I was so determined to regain control over those areas that were still within my control; namely my fitness, emotional well-being and intellectual pursuits. The recuperation of my facial symmetry and hearing were classified as “out of my control” so I made little effort to improve either and decided to just let time take its course.

I had become so focused on obtaining the most optimal level of health and fitness because I wanted to prove to my family and myself that I was strong and capable of running a household again. It was payback time for my husband who had so gracefully assumed more than his fair share of responsibilities for so many months without ever uttering a word of complaint. I wanted to take a little pressure off of him. I turned a room of my house into a gym and actually started a personal training business. Had I fallen off the deep end?

Soon enough, I had clients coming at different hours for private classes ranging from swimming, circuit training and strength training beginning at 6am! They affectionately nicknamed me, “My General” and I was all business. Admittedly, I loved ordering them around and pushing them to their limits.

Things were going well and I had an abundance of energy. Enough to light up an entire city. As I would venture out into the community, people would greet me for the first time with an expression of shock mainly because they had (privately) never expected me or the baby to survive the surgery, and secondly because hadn’t I also just lost my brother? Why wasn’t I all curled up in bed sobbing while watching soap operas and trashy talk shows and shoving anti-depressants down my throat? Was I wrong for forging ahead with my life? Was it wrong to neglect the negativity for a while?

In this small town in which we lived, gossip ran rampant and everyone knew everyone else’s business. I had spent years trying to “fit in” and be accepted by this exclusive private club of self-important people who had nothing more “important” about them than a large bank account. But quite frankly, I was now miraculously liberated. I had finally earned my right to not give a shit what anybody thought of me. I had been in death’s grip just a few months ago and I escaped. So if I wanted to walk around like a war veteran suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder,) it was my right. I was a survivor and I was proud of it!