Worked all day, drove 45 minutes to Fort Belvoir for the volunteering through my company. The first Monday of every month my company sponsors a bingo game for the families at Ft. Belvoir, and since I'm a lover of bingo I volunteered. The drive was long but of course it was worth it. I actually called 12 games of bingo, standing on my feet the whole time (about an hour and 40 minutes.) Then I drove 45 minutes home and I am totally, 100% exhausted. I left early because I have the worst sense of direction EVER -- and I pretty much always get lost when I'm going to a new place. I did fine getting to the Fort, but got totally lost once I was on base. At any rate, I left enough time, so I was still a little early.
Unfortunately, I haven't eaten enough today and I just had a bar and it's too late to eat anything more. I only managed 4 of my 5 medifast "meals" and didn't get the one I had to make for myself. Didn't get home until 8:45 and was just too tired to go to the store. But I'll do that tomorrow after work and then I'll be following the diet much more carefully.
So, the theme here today seems to be relapse and return. I sense that a lot of this has a lot to do with the idea of deprivation, so even though I've addressed this in a couple of blog responses tonight I would really like to explore it further.
If you read those blog comments, you know that I have said that my relapses were pretty much due to two reasons. 1. I felt deprived and consequently very sorry for myself. The benefits of smoking were overshadowed by the fact that I felt I had lost my friend, that other people "got to" smoke and I didn't. 2. I have blogged about this before, but every other quit was spent with my brain going "I want to smoke, I want to smoke, I want to smoke" over and over and over and over and over again. Wow, it makes me tired to think of that even now, and eventually I caved because that constant noise exhausted me.
Okay, so this quit started the same old way. I didn't prepare for the quit. I set a date and quit then (actually, I quit a day before my chosen quit date). I still felt deprived and I still heard the constant nagging. But fortunately my first full day of being quit I came back to this site. It was a holiday so I was home from work. I wasn't driving my car. I already didn't smoke in my condo, so that was a help. I had joined this site when I thought I was ready last March. I blogged one time. Within hours I was smoking again. I tried, unsuccessfully, to quit several more times during 2014, but didn't come back here. But that first full day of my quit I did come back here and my life was saved. First I was given a link to Allen Carr's book, and I read at least half of it that day. It spoke to me so profoundly that by the end of that day -- not even finishing the book yet -- I totally grasped that smoking is nothing more than satisfying the craving you created when you smoked the last one. Every other value we attributed to smoking was a lie. So reason 1 for my previous failed quits simply evaporated into thin air. You can't unlearn something and I have remained completely sure that I am not being deprived.
I started to blog. I committed to blogging every day for the first 30 days of my quit. I read everyone's blog and commented on them. I went to whyquit.com and read the materials there. I started making friends here. And then I realized that instead of my brain being filled by my very nagging addict's attempts to bring me back to smoking, I was filling my brain with positive thoughts of quitting. That made such a difference that reason number 2 disappeared.
So, at the risk of repeating myself, I love this community. I treasure the honesty we can achieve in a group of people who really care and are not judgmental. There is so much joy in this community that I had no trouble experiencing that joy.. I feel it every day. And I thank this community for opening the doors to freedom for me. It is my quit, and I am responsible for it, but you all cradled me in your arms when I needed it, spoke tough words when I needed them, and supported me stalwartly as I blogged like crazy.
Can't wait to meet so many of you in Nashville next month, and know that I love you all.
