Did you ever have a sordid fling with a "bad boy" or a "bad girl"? You know the type: reckless emotional tumult, steamy physical pleasure, torrid abandon, secret guilt. No rules, no restrictions. No expectations. The kind of guy or gal that you'd never take home to Mom. That you'd never put a ring on. That could never offer you any sort of stable future at all. The kind that's fun to mess around with...until it gets too exhausting or dangerous or unhealthy to tolerate any longer.
OR
Did you ever attempt to have a meaningful, strong, secure relationship with someone who just wasn't a good fit, no matter how hard you tried? So you broke up with them...but they won't let go? Emails, phone calls, letters. Trying to keep their hopes alive by clinging to you, ignoring the fact that they were dismissed.
Funny how cigarettes are like these bad romances. Oh, they are fun and exciting and desireable and needed...until they're not. Until we realize there's no stable, secure future in them. And once you make the decision to break up with them, you might find yourself tempted by nostalgia to take "just one more casual fling"...but it's a dead end choice and you know it. So, you let them go. For good.
Or maybe you have completely moved on but they pop up again out of nowhere and cry, "I want you back! Give me another chance! I promise I'll be better. Or different. Or whatever you want." But you've moved on, remember? And for very, very good reasons that are as valid today as they were yesterday.
Going backwards is just asking for more of the same. Romanticizing the same old destructive past prevents us from falling in love with a new and constructive future. And isn't that why we dumped them in the first place? Because we knew we weren't ever going to have enduring happiness? Because we decided we deserved a shot at something more stable? Something better? Something healthy? And if we were strong enough to dump them, aren't we strong enough to ignore them from that moment on? For the sake of ourselves? And can't we love ourselves enough to be patient and take the time to fall in love with a future that is, even now, at this moment, falling into place?
So, if any of this resonates with you as much as it does with me, take it to heart. Because you (like me) might just realize that you have already exercised the type of restraint and emotional fortitude needed to keep away from smoking. You dumped the "bad boy/girl", you moved on, you're finding better happiness and fulfillment, and you're not going back. Let it be the exact same philosophy with cigarettes. After all, you've already proven once (or twice?) that you're capable of putting an end to bad romance. Do it again now.
LIVE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! AND LOVE LIKE YOU KNOW HOW!
Storm (day 18)
