Reddit reviews Calculus the Easy Way

As a person who loves proofs and abstract math, here's why I support this book:

1. It's well reviewed, if it doesn't give all the details, at least people will have a basis for understanding the details. We don't really learn calc (in reals) until analysis, so why knock an intro to the intro?
   http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Easy-Way-Barrons-Z/dp/0764129201/ref=pd_cp_b_1
   
   
2. You don't necessarily need calculus to learn the abstraction that's helpful to math. In fact, I think it's possible you would be better off learning that abstraction in set theory and number theory (that is, an intro to math reasoning class, which is where it really broke through for me).
   
   

This book is cheap and it will teach you calculus. It's pretty corny but it really does work to explain the fundamentals.

I also had about a 12 year break between HS and college, and like you got through Trig just fine and then found myself drowning in Calc 1. Here's what helped me:
-attended another section of the class with another professor
-books that translated the mathy language into intuition
(http://www.amazon.com/How-Ace-Calculus-Streetwise-Guide/dp/0716731606 and http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Easy-Way-Douglas-Downing/dp/0764129201/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415864089&sr=1-1&keywords=calculus+the+easy+way)
-MIT OCW videos
-Khan Academy

Good luck. If you make it through this.. well, I'm not going to say it's easy going after, but you will know how to be confused and work through that confusion, and that is a priceless skill in the rest of the curriculum.