First, it was very cold with high winds here today. I'm in Northern Virginia, which probably sounds almost tropical to our Canandian friends, but it can get really, really cold here I didn't have to go out to smoke. I did some housecleaning. I didn't have to stop for a smoke. I brought work home today to make up for the time I missed when I went to the ER yesterday andI sat down, focused and got so into what I was doing that I didn't even sense time passing. And there was no crave to remind me that it had been more than 1/2 hour since we stocked up. Once that idea would come into my head when I was smoking I may not be able to leave right at that moment, but from that moment on I was thinking about how I could make it happen. I went shopping for a couple of hours and that was good because I was used to being in those stores without smoking. But boy, the trigger of walking OUT of those stores hit hart. But it wasn't hard to say to that part of me that craves and lies to me "Go away. I don't do that any more." I then went to bingo with 4 of my non-smoking friends and although we weren't lucky in bingo, we had a great time and a lot of laughs. Didn't have to go out the break and huddle in the cold to smoke.
One of my friends tonight asked about when she sees smokers out in the freezing windy rain with a pathetic little pocket umbrella over them,, what could they be thinking? People who have neverf smoked simply cannot grasp the additction that rules every part of our lives, relational, professional, financial, and social. Ahe we will go to ridiculous lengths to maintian our source orf nicotine. So I feel like I have walked out of a somewhat parallel universe where my perfectly intelligent brain drank way too much of the KoolAid and refused to look at my life, my health, my finances realistically. Now I am free to do that, and sometimes it's hard to brush aside that veil we hid behind in our smoking days and see the world as it is.
It's fraught with troubles and pains and disappontments and stressors, but it is also joyous, surprising, hilarious and affirming. I'm so glad to have rejoined the rest of the human race (and especially our elder Ex's) to live in the real sweet smelling beautiful world.
And for my first day in NML it was just fine.
