Help, I’m really overwhelmed
In a message dated 10/14/2002 11:41:14 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ahumblemom@… writes:
Hi, Laura,
You won’t be better off; and the funny thing is, you won’t even be comfortable.
I quit for a month or so and then picked them back up for much the same reasons
— all my friends smoke, my husband smokes, and I just got tired of it. It
seemed like every experience was just one more thing I’d have to learn to do
without smoking, and I thought, “Gosh, is this never going to end? How long am I
going to have to remind myself that I’m not a smoker?”
So I ended up picking them back up again and am now working on quitting again.
Funny thing is, I can’t be an oblivious smoker anymore. I know how much better
it feels not to smoke; have feelings of failure because I picked them back up
again; and know I can’t ignore all the literature I read about what exactly
smoking does to the body.
The more time passed between what scared/inspired me enough to quit, the less I
remembered how uncomfortable I was smoking, how badly I wanted to quit and stay
quit.
Maybe it’s because I kept focus on what I *wasn’t* doing … rather than setting
a goal based on what I *was* doing — living smoke-free.
I’m not comfortable right now…smoking some days, beating myself up about it,
not smoking on other days, blaming smokers around me for my inability to quit,
etc. I have to take responsibility for this and decide once and for all to quit,
as Steve has pointed out to me in the past.
I hear the other smokers around me cough, get out of breath, squint their eyes
cause smoke gets in ‘em, see their damaged teeth, and wonder why in hell it is
that they do it, and that I do it, and can’t put ‘em down for good. Or won’t put
‘em down for good.
I’m not comfortable having lived a while smoke-free and now back to smoking on
and off. I’m not happy with the mental struggle.
And you won’t be, either.
Hang on, Laura. You can do it.
–Harper