“Each day, 1,000 young people under the age of 18 become new regular, daily smokers, and almost 90 percent of all smokers began at or before their 18th birthday…”
“I know; I was one of these teenagers. And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time.”
- President Barack Obama
See, a blogger is a kind of writer and lately I’ve been relying on pictures rather than my words to convey the goings on in my life and to be perfectly honest, even I find that bad form, especially when my blog here is so freaking b0rked that I can’t even format pictures properly. (I wish I knew why…I can format pictures within and around text, like a magazine, on my end, but when I go to publish, it loses all formatting. It’s been this way since the beginning, it’s extremely frustrating and I don’t know how to fix it.)
Anyway, I was going to do yet another post full of pictures from the Elmvale Maple Syrup Festival that happened on Saturday and which I attended, but fuck it, go look at the pictures yourself, I put them in a gallery for that express purpose. That’s not to say this post won’t contain some of those pictures, it’s just that it won’t contain all of them.
For some ungodly reason, I woke up at around 6am on Saturday and sat at the computer “doing stuff” (aka Twittering about being up at such an ungodly hour) until around 7 when I decided that I would go down to the Maple Syrup festival by myself and help my mom set up her booth. My family was still sleeping so going by myself was really my only option and by the look of the sky at the time, it appeared as though Mother Nature was going to unleash her hellacious fury all over our fine town so I figured my mom would appreciate the help in getting set up before that happened.
Now, let me be clear on some things here before we go any further. I have been working on my immersion therapy and re-learning how to do things that I forgot how to do in my agoraphobic state since the end of February. It may not seem like a big deal to anyone else that I was A) up at 6am, B) got showered and dressed by myself, C) made the decision to walk downtown by myself and D) actually follow through. This is progress that even my shrink would probably be surprised by. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it feels as though I’m finally waking up from a nightmare.
Well, my shower started waking people in the house up, primarily my 10-year-old daughter who was eager to get on the midway and suddenly, even though I was dressed and ready to go, I had to wait for her to get her shit together because she wanted to come with me. And she took FOREVER.
As she got ready, Mother Nature began to unleash her fury, completely negating my entire reason for wanting to go to the Maple Syrup Festival early, let alone at all. Usually this is an event I skip, but this was the first year my mom, who’s an artist by the way, had a booth in it and I knew her “new” boyfriend (of 3 years) who I haven’t met before was going to be there and it really was high time that I met this man.
So I waited and waited and waited for Madison to get her shit together and finally we both set out towards town under an umbrella as the world crashed down all around us. Now again, this is a major milestone. I went outside the house, more or less by myself, twice in the same week. I have no idea what’s gotten into me, maybe it’s just the weather, but it appears as though, once again, that I’m making progress.
But at the same time it all seems so meaningless. I’m the kind of person where if it’s not productive, it’s not worth doing, so while I see that walking down to the Maple Syrup Festival is a major milestone, I kind of don’t give a shit because so what? Did I enjoy the walk? No. Did I do anything productive on the walk like take pictures? No. Did I do anything productive once I got there? No. Did this benefit me in any way? No. Did it inconvenience me? Absolutely. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to go. I made myself go and I did so for the sake of other people. It’s difficult for me to see that as a success. (As an aside, holy fuck do I hate this keyboard.)
So anyway, we get to the Maple Syrup Festival, I find my mom’s booth and then…I stood around feeling like I was in the way while she and her boyfriend, John, wiped things off (the storm had passed by this point) and set things up. Then I sat around some more and made idle chit-chat with the two of them, took a few pictures, and absent-mindedly talked to my mom a bit about her website, which I created and should theoretically be maintaining because she can’t do it herself, except I don’t so it remains unmaintained. As this was all going on, people started to fill the streets and come by my mom’s booth and more than that, my mom’s booth was situated right in front of the community centre where the pancake breakfast was happening all day and there was a LONG LONG LONG line forming and everyone in that LONG LONG LONG line was looking into my mother’s booth and inadvertently at me.
People looking at me is something I’m not entirely comfortable with and is one of the reasons I stopped leaving the house in the first place. Now let me be clear about something here before I start sounding like a delicate flower here, I am currently undergoing immersion therapy, which means I’m supposed to be immersing myself in situations that make me uncomfortable like the situation above. At the same time, it’s not all crowds that make me uncomfortable or anxious and it’s not all people looking at me that makes my skin crawl, it’s only in places or situations where I don’t have a defined role. Sitting in my mom’s booth, I was just sitting there taking up space, whereas, at my art show in October I was “an artist”, I had a defined role, and thus the crowd and attention was more bearable.
So after sitting around for what seemed like forever, Blake and our son, Wes, showed up and we decided to go to Steelers, which was just down the street, for breakfast. This is yet another milestone: eating in public. Especially in an extremely crowded restaurant. It wasn’t so bad though, they seated us in the back which was mostly away from the rest of the patrons. So we ate, which was pretty uneventful and then we went back to my mom’s booth where I hung out again while Blake took the kids to the midway. (While I was feeling particularly brave on Saturday, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was dealing with screaming kids and the midway.)
My mom needed a pee break so we walked around some of the booths near the porta-potties while she smoked a cigarette which was such a strange experience. I turned 30 on March 1st and had made a pact with myself when I started smoking at 16 that I couldn’t smoke again after I was 30 and thus, I’ve successfully quit and unless something extremely disasterous happens, I shall remain smoke-free for the rest of my life. Part of quitting smoking though, was secluding myself from it completely and my mom having a cigarette on Saturday was the first smoke I’d come into contact with in almost 2 months. It’s funny how your senses work, I mean I didn’t expect it to bother me at all, but it was the worst smelling thing ever and the smoke kept blowing towards me and I could feel myself breathing it and it REALLY bothered me. In that moment I couldn’t believe that I’d done this idiotic thing myself for almost half my life. How did I not notice how vile it really was? How is that possible? And this was outside! I think if I was in a confined space with a smoker at this point, I probably wouldn’t be able to handle the stench or the tightening in my lungs I felt as I was inhaling the smoke second-hand. And to think, people PAY CRAZY AMOUNTS OF MONEY for this priviledge that’s disgusting, makes their teeth look gross AND is killing them. Wtf, are we all retarded?
Anyway, during our little walk, my mom bought me cotton candy and I waited for her to pee and then we went back to her booth where I sat around some more and made awkward small talk with John until Blake and Wes came back and informed me that the midway did, indeed, have Tiny Tom donuts which I absolutely live for.
For the uninitiated, Tiny Tom donuts are these itty bitty donuts that they make fresh right in the booth, which they then put in a paper bag and cover in flavoured sugar. I always go for the cinnamon, personally.
Soooooooooooo Blake and I went to the midway, leaving the kids at my mom’s booth, on a mission for Tiny Tom’s donuts for both myself, the kids and my mom and surprisingly I did okay even though the midway was a zoo. Then we brought the donuts back, cutting through several people’s yards as to avoid the crowd down the street to the arena where the midway was located, we ate, then I bought some maple syrup ($23 for a litre!) and then I decided to go home while Blake & the kids went to the midway again.
Yes, I walked home. All by myself. And when I got home, I slept.
When I woke up it was about 4pm and Blake & the kids were back. I screwed around on the internet for a bit and then asked Blake what he thought about a trip to Barrie for Starbucks since, y’know, we hadn’t spent enough money that day. So we all hopped in the car and off to Barrie we went.
Along the way I saw all kinds of things I’d love to photograph and show the world and I thought about winning the Cube and all the things I could do if I actually did win. Everything I saw reminded me of the Cube and the freedom that funny looking little car embodies to me.
Finally we got to Starbucks, I got my “vanilla milkshake thing with whipped cream” and Blake got…some kind of coffee concoction and off we went in search of the Nissan dealership just to see where it was, and if they were open, get a couple of Cube booklets. If you’re on Blake’s Twitter, you will have seen the picture of him humping the door, while I – uncharacteristically – took the classier route and took the picture I posted last night.
On our way out of Barrie, we (well…I) decided to stop by Shopper’s Drug Mart (which is a lot like the CVS chain y’all have in the US) where I bought myself some new makeup, new sunglasses (blue! w00t!) and a bunch of other crap. I figured if I was going to do this whole “leaving the house” thing more often, then I should probably make an effort in the makeup department every now and then and most of what I had at home is really old and the newer stuff I bought a couple of years ago was STOLEN by an ex-friend.
After Shopper’s it was getting pretty late, so we got Blake & the kids pizza and headed home. Then the kids went to bed and I don’t really remember what we did for the rest of the night. We probably dicked around on the internet and begged for votes for the Hypercube contest.
When it was time to go to bed though, I got pretty sad. Overall I had a good day, even though it was a busy, chaotic day completely outside of my routine, but the thing is, along with all of the other things I’m having to re-learn after being secluded and on a non-schedule for so long, I have to learn how to be happy. I’ve said it a million times before but when I was the happiest I’d ever been in my whole entire life, it turned out I was manic, psychotic and had to be hospitalized. So I get suspicious of happy feelings, happy feelings scare me.
But Blake reassured me that it was just a good day, that I wasn’t manic or even close to it and that it was okay to just be happy. So that’s what I did. And then I fell asleep.
So I’m dicking around on the internet.
I’m dying for a smoke. I know it’s just the “nicotine monster” screaming to be fed and that eventually that little bastard is going to die, but right now it really sucks. :o/ It’s going to take all the willpower I have not to go over to the neighbours’ tomorrow to hang out and bum a few smokes, but I’m reserved to not doing it. If I can make it 3 days without doing that, then I think I’m golden. After a few false starts, tomorrow is day 1.
I went to bed tonight at 10pm, after Heroes, because I was literally falling asleep in my chair. Then I woke up around 1:30am and haven’t been able to get back to sleep due to what my shrink calls “racing thoughts”. I’ve taken an extra clonazepam and an Ativan and if those don’t kick in soon, I’m pulling out the big guns and taking Zyprexa because the more I sleep, the less I want to smoke and if I can sleep through the next 3 days of withdrawal, that’d be great.
I also can’t sleep because I’m excited. Today the mail lady came while I was sleeping and left a package slip on the door. If it is what I think it is, it means I have a new toy to play with and that makes me happy. I have it on good authority that a new camera is coming my way and that makes me beyond giddy and all I can’t stop thinking about all of the things I want to do with it. Images flashing through my mind, my brain figuring out logistics.
When Madison was 3 and 4, I took a lot of really great pictures of her using a piece of crap 1.3 mpx Sony Cybershot that ultimately got used to death and it’s always bummed me out that I never got to do the same with Wes because right now all we have is this PIECE OF SHIT FROM HELL Canon Digital Rebel (yeah I know, it’s supposed to be good, whatever, I hate it, it’s 100 x more camera than I know how to use).
(Click here if you haven’t seen the rest.)
But now that a certain friend from the intarwebs who probably wants to remain nameless has gifted me this new version of the Sony Cybershot for Xmas, I’ll be able to and that makes me sooooooooo happy.
There’s this trail with a creek running along it near my house and I’m excited for spring so I can take Wes back there and take good pictures of him like I did with Madison. I was laying in bed like, planning the shots, as well as the logistics. Like, do I need Blake’s help? (Maybe.) Should I do some with the dogs? (Maybe.) But what I’m thinking is that one day in the spring when Madison’s at school, we’ll both douse ourselves with bug spray, pack a picnic and just go on an adventure back there with the camera and see what happens.
I wish I could explain what it looks like back there. There’s a creek, of course, but along the side of the creek there’s a path that’s lined with these purple flowers in the spring. Over the creek is a canopy of trees that make these amazing shadows and reflections on the water and the shots of Wes in my head are all golden.
I CAN’T WAIT!
Here’s another pic I took with my old Cybershot, which I still have and refuse to throw out even though it doesn’t work anymore:
And another:
I don’t know what it is about that brand of camera, but I just love it, it’s like this amazing tool to me, and I’m so excited about my new one maybe being here tomorrow that I just can’t sleep.
I’m also hoping it’ll take better pictures of my paintings than our PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT FROM HELL Rebel. Have I mentioned that I hate that fucking thing? Because I do. Immensely.
Of course, the package that Blake’s going to pick up tomorrow may not even be the camera at all (truthfully, it probably isn’t) and I’m getting excited for no reason, but still, my creative juices are flowing and my head is flooded with images that I wish I could turn into reality right this second. I thought about sketching them, but I figured they were probably best left in my head for now.
Well the drugs are kicking in, I’m going to go make another attempt at sleeping and dream up more shots.
(X-Posted to Live Journal, although the Technorati links are different. Favourite them both!)
It’s the bane of my fucking existence, smoking.
On Sunday night, I promised Blake, my husband, that I was quitting and that the pack I had in my possession was my last pack ever. But then Monday was a snow day, so my kids were playing with the neighbour’s kids and I had to go over there twice to deal with them and they’re heavy, pushy smokers, so I smoked the two they offered. Still, I thought I was doing good, I went from half a pack a day to two on my first day of “quitting”, even if they were those nasty full-bodied smokes from the local reservation that probably have 10 times the carcinogens of regular cigarettes and at least twice the nicotine of my usual brand.
Then on Tuesday, I inexplicably went next door again, with the intent of bumming “just one”, which ended up being “just one” that I smoked with the neighbours and one to take home and smoke later. This one I took home to smoke later ended up sort of being two as I smoked half of it and then smoked the other half an hour later.
Then today, Wednesday, it was a similar scenario, but there’s a bit of a backstory before I get into why I bought a pack tonight.
See, my neighbour, Wayne, ran into some trouble with the law a week ago. Without spilling the details of their personal lives, he got busted for a DUI and lost his licence for 90 days. He works nights, leaving for work around 1:30am, and Judy, his girlfriend (common-law wife, whatever), has to get up with him and drive him to work. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but they have an 8-year-old daughter who they have to wake up in the middle of the night to take with them. So, being neighbourly as I am, I offered to come over and stay with their daughter so she could keep sleeping since I’m always up at retarded o’clock anyway. I made this offer on Monday.
For some reason, they don’t seem to want to take me up on my offer, even though every day this week they said they would. So every night around 1:30, I put my cell phone in my hand and wait at the window to see when they’ll turn their upstairs hallway light off because that should, theoretically, be the signal that they’re ready to leave and that they’ll call…and that I can bum “just one” smoke from them.
But, for the past 3 nights, they’ve just left. No call.
I don’t really care that they’re not taking me up on my offer (again, even though they said they would), but the thing is, from noon until 1:30am, I’m going through mental torture and nicotine withdrawl. I’m not just seeing this as a neighbourly thing to do, I’m looking at it as an opportunity to smoke, which, the more I think about it, isn’t really “quitting” at all. In fact, it’s pretty goddamn pathetic.
So today when I was over there, they said they’d give me a call tonoight to come over and stay at their house while Judy drove Wayne to work and all day I was literally counting down the hours until it would be time for that to happen. But when I saw them from my living room window back out of the driveway, I had a moment of both weakness and stupidity and the next thing I knew, I was brushing the snow off the car and driving to the store, where I bought a small pack of cigarettes.
The whole way home I felt like shit, but it’s not like I could take them back. I felt like shit because at that moment I’d broken a promise to my husband, something I’ve never done before and there was nothing i could do to take it back. Truthfully, when I was in the car on the way home, before the pack of cigarettes were even opened, i was in tears and at that moment, I didn’t even want them anymore. I contemplated throwing them out the window and pretending like it never even happened, but I thought Blake would be even more mad at me if I wasted the $6.66 that way instead of smoking them.
I’ve written him a letter, while outside smoking, promising that this is the last pack, even though he has no reason to believe me because I made a promise three days ago that I ultimately broke tonight by buying this pack in the first place.
I don’t know why I’m having such trouble quitting this time around.
My first attempt at quitting was January 1st of this year and my method was the patch. This went well and I did the 10-week program and was fine until some stressful situation happened in April and I began smoking again for that month. Then I read “The Easy Way To Stop Smoking” by Allen Carr and was blown away by the book. I quit immediately and stayed quit until a month ago when Blake and I had a huge fight, and my mental health became questionable.
I tried reading “Easy Way” again, except it obviously hasn’t been as effective the second time around. Maybe because I already knew all of the information contained in the book, I dunno. I also tried reading his second book for relapsers called “The ONLY Way To Stop Smoking”, but I got to the chapter about how our designer didn’t want us to smoke and the dude totally lost me. I threw the book in the garbage and just continued reading “Easy Way”.
I know that the key to my success is to make it three full days and nights without any nicotine in my system and after that, I’m laughing, but thus far I haven’t been able to achieve that.
Since it’s obvious that, for whatever reason, Wayne & Judy don’t require my babysitting services, I’m mentally withdrawing the offer and will now be avoiding them like the plague, at least until I have this under control. Right now they are my weakness, my obstacle…which is only half true, I guess *I* am my biggest weakness by going over there to bum cigarettes to begin with, but my point is that if I’m going to quit smoking, period, I’m going to have to stay away from them and stop finding excuses to go over there, knowing full well that they’re going to offer me cigarettes and knowing full well I won’t be able to turn them down.
In “Easy Way”, Allen Carr talks about nicotine addiction as having a little monster inside you that you have to feed approximately every 45 minutes and that when you’re quitting, the nicotine cravings are that little monster dying. It takes three days, give or take, for “the monster” to die completely and for all of the nicotine to be out of your system. This is why I think that if I can go three days without any nicotine in my body, I’ll be good to go. The thing is with this week, and why I ultimately failed, is that I had all of these false starts, I didn’t allow the nicotine monster to die, I fed it, albeit very little, and that just created even bigger cravings, it caused the monster to be a big one instead of a little one and it made it scream for more instead of whimper.
I know I can get a hold of myself. I know I can do this. I just had a moment of weakness tonight and it didn’t help that I wasn’t in the right headspace to begin with. I was “quitting” instead of QUITTING. I was making exceptions, like, it’s okay to have “just one” smoke with the neighbours, it’s okay to take one for later, it’s okay if I’m not buying them etc etc etc. The thing is, that just doesn’t work, that leads to a situation like tonight.
So, I’m going to smoke this pack of cigarettes I bought tonight, but I’m going to do it purposefully and carefully at the same time because this is the LAST PACK EVER. This is the last my body will ever know of nicotine no matter how bored or stressed out I get. Like I said, I’m going to avoid my neighbours like the plague, my offer of babysitting, since they’ve kinda fucked me over in that respect for three days in a row and have made it obvious they don’t want my help, is now null and void. It also helps that it’s getting very cold and snowy outside and thus, smoking outside or walking next door is getting harder and becoming more of a pain in the ass.
Now, in all of this, I’m not dissing “Easy Way”, in fact, I still endorse it wholeheartedly, quitting with it the first time was as pleasurable and effective as advertised, but what I’ve had to learn the hard way is that Allen Carr is DEAD SERIOUS when he says at the end that you can never have another cigarette as long as you live. It’s not so easy to quit the second time, although I haven’t quite figured out why as his advice and allegories are spot on. Smoking IS stupid, it’s like banging your head against a wall because stopping feels so good. You only get pleasure from smoking a cigarette because it removes the anxiety of withdrawal you feel from the previous one. I GET ALL THAT. But applying it the second time around is harder, I wish I knew why.
I think my plan for the next three days is to just throw myself into art and try to keep myself busy. Wish me luck.
This week I finished a new piece, trying to use art as therapy for quitting smoking (again).
This one’s called “Death to Smoking” and is going to hang on my studio wall to remind me of how idiotic and dangerous smoking really is so hopefully I’ll think twice about doing it again.
As far as actually quitting smoking (again)…it’s been up and down. I can seem to go 3 days without smoking and be mostly okay, but it’s that third day that kills me. I think if I can get over that hump, I’ll be fine, but so far I haven’t been able to. :o/ I read Allen Carr’s book again and I know how stupid I’m being and yesterday when we were at Wal*Mart I saw two women smoking and realized just how trashy people look when they’re doing it, so I’m aware of all this, it’s just beating the nicotine-craving monster inside me I’m having a hard time dealing with.
I know I’ll get there, I did it before, things just kinda suck right now. I know I just have to keep at it and keep BUSY, and hopefully the next few days will be distracting enough to help me get through 3 days without breaking down.
Thursday is the Touched By Fire art show and Saturday is Steph the Geek’s wedding, so hopefully those will be good distractions rather than stressful events that’ll have me wanting to smoke more. *fingers crossed*
And with that, I’m off to bed so I can start tomorrow nicotne-free.