Re: having trouble this morning


"Stephanie" <stephanieajesq@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1143820013.982415.58390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|I am stuck (note the word choice) on a mountain, no access to
| cigarettes if I even were to decide to succumb. The only people around
| are oh-so-healthy, that I couldn't bum one were I to want to. (Right
| now I just hate fucking healthy balanced people who are emotionally and
| mentally stable and have never been addicted to anything and move
| through the world with equanimity. *** you and your sensible
| portions and single daily glass of red wine ("so good for the heart!")
| and 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day).

Hi Stephanie, Almost to a month quit I see. Some of the pain will ease
very soon. To be replaced with other feelings and experiences while you go
through (note word choice), through because you cannot go around them, the
rest of this journey. Hope that makes sense because I want to put those
parts all together for you.

I hold my hand up in testament to the "hate fucking healthy balanced people
who are emotionally and mentally stable" blah blah blah. I stay away from
those people. Either they're for real or they're really good liars. Either
way I have to live with myself so I don't concern myself with them.

| Uh ... excuse me for that. Anyway, as a practical matter, unless I
| were to find Utah's version of a sherpa and/or camel and driver, there
| is no chance of my smoking any time soon.

Well. We all know if you wanted to you would. Camel or no camel. (Yes,
that's a definate play on words.) So you are doing fine because you haven't
flagged down that camel.

| That said, I have just spent the last 45 minutes weepy, desolate,
| actually crying. CRYING for heaven's sake!!! Feeling ALONE without my
| cigarette. That no matter what I do - what I eat, or if I nap, or if I
| get a massage, no matter what I do 'for myself' it is all going to
| suck, I don't want ANY of it, I just WANT TO SMOKE. The neural
| pingings in my brain insist, and insist LOUDLY, that if I could just go
| stand out with a cigarette whilst surveying this sunrise THEN and only
| THEN would I feel content and whole.

Completely a part of quitting for many folks. Crying, weepy days. It's ok.
Cry it out. I think it's good for you. Ah yes, the cigarette as pal way
of thinking. I've got something for that.

http://www.quitbuddies.org/20Buddies.html

Remember that these feelings only last a short time. Now is the time to do
something else. Go for a walk, take a bath, etc. etc. etc., go have fun
with yourself or someone else. Anything but think about smoking.

Dwelling on it only makes it hurt worse and longer.


| I think I am raging against my own insanities as much as I am crying
| FOR permission to have a cigarette. I am crying because unlike the
| other insanities which plague me THESE I alone induced and nurtured. I
| realize that every fucking time I picked up a cigarette I SECURED for
| myself that at a future time came when I was standing on a mountain
| with a steaming cup of coffee, surveying the landscape and the sky,
| feeling the wonder of God's (the Universe, the Order, whatever)
| presence, I would simulataneously and irrationally feel the swell of
| incomplete-ness, that in my very quest to become full, I would feel I
| was missing something integral to the experience.

Well. Sorry but no permission here. Not to smoke anyway. You do have
permission to do something nice for yourself. We all know smoking is not a
nice thing we can do for ourselves. That's what you have to tell yourself.
I'm betting you know the adage "fake it till you make it"? It's what I used
in the beginning of my quit. I was a non-exsmoker. So that meant I didn't
smoke. In that way I had to find another reason for my problem. It had
nothing to do with putting a poisonous weed to my lip and lighting and
smoking it. My brain finally got the idea that I wasn't going to smoke so
it finally gave it a rest.


| "Pah" to anyone who says this is not drug addiction. Right now I think
| that the ONLY way I can collect myself at all is to let the full
| measure of the Beast puff (sorry) it's chest to full height and stare
| me down, and for me to respectfully give It its due. For me, to in
| any way minimize that which I am Up Against in this is to court
| disaster. If this sounds a little anthropomorphic ... well, that is how
| it feels right now. When I quit drinking 9+ years ago, I used to FEEL
| if there was alcohol around, say, in a friend's house where I was
| spending the night. I did not want it, I did not crave it, it did not
| call to me. Well past the time that it's siren's song had lost its
| hold on my ship I can tell you: I still FELT its presence if it was in
| the house. The best way I can describe this is say you are at a party
| or a business gathering, someplace with lots of people around, and
| someone is there that you cannot stand, are maybe a little afraid of,
| or intimidated by, just generally when you think of that person you get
| a huge wash of 'less than' You aren't talking to this person at the
| gathering and no one else around even knows that these feelings are
| going through you (including the subject of your emotional distress).
| You go on about your business at the party while simultaneously being
| painfully attuned to where he/she is, with whom he/she is talking. what
| he/she is wearing etc. And you know IMMEDIATELY if he/she has left.

The same could be said for an ex lover... Kind of how we view smoking while
we're actively doing it or just quitting it. It doesn't have to be
something we perceive as 'bad'.

| What is wierd here is that there are no cigarettes around - but what is
| around (of course) is the Beast that is within me (because I (all
| together now) "take me with me" (the BANE of my existence). It is
| actually a strange confluence of circumstances: I don't think I have
| ever been in the height of Want in which the object (Drink, Smoke) is
| not available. It has forced me to recognize that the locus of the
| Beast in inside, not outside.

Yes, it seems that when we quit we then have to go about the business of
seeing ourselves. There is no longer that veil of smoke covering our every
feeling, movement. It can be surprising. Go with it, Stephanie. I like
the new me much better than the stinky other me that smoked. It took a
little time but it was worth it. Don't be scared that you'll find someone
you don't like. I think I can promise that won't happen. Think in terms of
different instead of good, bad.

| I cannot take my having quit smoking for granted. I can't act like it
| is easy all the time. I have noticed that I haven't even mentioned
| having quit to anyone in my real life for well over a week (sorry, we
| are talking dog years here) because somehow ... I have shifted from
| being proud of having quit to living in such shame for having smoked.
| I need to recognize that this is dangerous, self-defeating thinking.
| And so classic classic me, omigod. I think I need to tell the people
| in my life (here come the tears): "Please try to remember, as silly as
| it may seem to you, to tell me you are proud of me for not smoking, and
| keep saying it for lot longer than it seems to you like I should need
| to hear it, and please say it more often than you think I should need
| to hear it. And, oh, flowery, over-the-top verbiage, yeah, those are
| good word choices." Because I am sitting in my SHAME, not in my JOY.
| ***.

Funny thing is, most of those people don't know that you are going through
something so difficult. Most of them think you should be 'over it' by now.
That's why we are here. Can't expect never smokers to understand. Heck,
even some that have quit don't get it.

That said, please do tell the people you are close to, that it's important
for you to get positive feedback for a long time in your quit. You can tell
them I said so. ;)

Let go of that guilt, Stephanie. It does nothing good in this quitting
business. Just let it go. A very important step for you to take.

Accept that you are a fabulous woman for doing this. Quitting *is* hard.
The thing is it's not really as hard as we think it is when we are still
smoking or newly quit. When I looked back after about 7 months of quitting
I realized it was so much easier that I had first supposed it would be to
quit. I couldn't understand why I had waited so long.

Shame has no place here. None. You really should be so proud of yourself.
I am proud that you are here and quit and being honest with yourself about
how you feel. This is exactly how to go about stopping smoking.


| Right now I am very grateful for wireless internet. And for your
| long-suffering patience. I won't be boarding a pack-animal on hunt for
| a 7/11 anytime soon, no worries. I am just really droopy. "Floppit"
| as we used to call it when I was a kid.

There is no long suffering patience going on here. We are all here for
mostly selfish reasons. Those being we need you here as well. If you
weren't here we'd have no way of remembering why we don't want to go back.
At least that's what I think.

This post of your's is actually a positive thing. Kind of hard to see that
right now but I'm telling you the truth.

So have you read all of this place yet? Please do. Then after you're done
send in your pic for the gallery and get your friends to send theirs, too.
You'll have your own special page of quitbuddies to see.

www.quitbuddies.org



| love, Stephanie
|
| Three weeks, two days, 22 hours, 6 minutes and 52 seconds. 191
| cigarettes not smoked, saving $71.76. Life saved: 15 hours, 55 minutes.
|

I know it's hard to see right now but you really are doing very well. I
look forward to seeing you here for a long time.

Love,
Kimberly


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