I knew, I wasn't taking the daily pledge as before. I knew, I had the little voice in my head saying "just one". I knew, I was letting the daily mantra become more bi-weekly. I knew, yet in the moment I was like this is great. Great until I was woke up with the nightmare of smoking and the guilt of giving in again. The "again" and "again"...the acknowledgment that addiction has me and I am unable to control it.
Failure to plan is planning to fail. I just want to scream at, I hate it, I am just mad. I just want to be the person that gets up one day and says I quit and goes on with life. After years and years of smoking, I realize that I am not that person. I may want to be but that is not in my cards. Nicotine has taken away so many years of my mental and physical health with its grips for a few hours of ???
How easy it is to forget the anguish of doing something against what I say I value....forget the burning in the back of my throat, the headaches, the anxiety, the burning in my lungs, the taste in my mouth, the struggle. How easy to forget the feeling of taking a full deep breath or the joy of hiking up that mountain without stopping to catch my breath, the sense of pride in the morning when I said no the night before to the urge to smoke, the empowerment I feel each day when I make a choice to not smoke and live in line with what I value. How easy to forget. Time to put back on those fighting boots and just acknowledge it is what it is and NOPE is where I will find the freedom I seek.
