Today was a very special day: I benched for the first time after I was released from the hospital. I benched for the first time after that sadistic doctor (Mauricio Antonelli Lehoczki) told me I’d never lift again, that I’d be immobilized for 6 months and would come home with a catheter on my carotid. He twisted his mouth in hate , tensed his muscles and spit poison as he spoke.
He survived: I couldn’t kill him with my bare hands: I was in bed, hooked to a morphine pump, stoned on pain killers and very weak. But I spoke back – not nearly as much as I should, but I did. I will report him and unfortunately I think about how much I want him to feel the horror of having the greatest love of your life plucked from your life like that. It was like a death sentence, like a dark hand reaching for my soul to rip it off me.
But he didn’t.
Instead I came home and recover at a fast pace, given the seriousness of my disease. Instead of some psychopath at my bedside, I have the few friends I cherish.
Today, Hugo and Morgana came here to make my dream come true. They loaded the bar for me to bench.
It was a very light bench. Everything was weird. Around 1.3X my bodyweight, my bench curls into the technique I am known for: tight lats and high arch, flat feet well under my shoulders, chest out, shoulders in. But I can’t do that: I have to flatten my bench as much as possible to protect the healing of my soft L3/L4, on their way of ankylosing.
It doesn’t matter. I have all the patience in the world. I kissed her as I racked her back for the last time.
Tomorrow we’ll meet again and I’ll take her for a ride. We’ll study a way to move together while we wait for my osleolysed bones to heal.
Hugo and Morgana were there to assist me. I have no idea how aware they are of what they witnessed today. It was one of the happiest of my life.
Online, I read Jack assure me they would be there for me as much as I needed them. They got my back. Bernard sent me a poem: “Out of Suffering have emerge the strongest souls; The most massive characters are seared with scars.”
I have never been this sick before. I have never felt so much pain. I have never been so private concerning an experience. I have never been so happy to reunite with my beloved bar. I have never felt so much gratitude towards my friends.
The sadistic monster, the terror, minor and major annoyances – they disappeared. Under that bar today, all I felt was JOY. Now, all I feel is GRATITUDE.
This text is also published on my personal journal about things I feel grateful for (my “virtual gratitude jar”), GRATIAS