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.
