Sunday

Still Struggling


I am now on my third time quitting smoking, and it’s more challenging this time then the last two times. The first time, which is chronicled here, was six months long. The second was nine months long. Each time, my quit was murdered by stress – which I didn’t have another way of dealing with.

The first time, I ended up with a rat in my house. I am extremely rodent-phobic, so this was a major stressor. Of course, I probably was over-reacting to the situation, but that’s what a phobia is. To say I flipped my lid would be an understatement. It appeared to be someone’s pet rat (sorry to whomever may have lost it) as it was the wrong color for our local wild rats, and was lacking that ‘wild’ look. It died in a rat trap, though I will say I was expecting it to be a red squirrel (the scourge of Maine).

The second time I was doing great with this whole quitting smoking thing…or so I thought. My mother ended up in a car accident, and died one month later. Needless to say, this was stress I was NOT prepared to deal with. Unfortunately that also seemed to precipitate an immense increase in stress for the next year. At the same time as the drama unfolding with my mother, I was diagnosed with several health issues. That was just fuel for the fire, let me tell you.

But I’m not giving up. No matter how hard it may be to quit smoking, or how many times I have to try, I refuse to stop trying. I am tired of being a slave to something that is probably making things worse in the long run, even if it is the go to stress reliever. If you are quitting smoking yourself, don’t stop trying…even if you think you have failed. You haven’t.
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