I’m not sure what it is exactly that I’m feeling right now. It seems like resignation, a little like loss, some frustration, some fear of change, touching the unknown, maybe just tired. I’m not sure. These seem like such negative things but I don’t really feel all that negative. Really, it feels more neutral than anything. Several some ones, who have become a part of my sphere are moving away. Some will return, some will remain on the outer perimeter and some will just disappear. I ran into a ghost from my past yesterday. I saw the ghost but it didn’t see me and it raised some fear and anxiety in a heart beat. It took a while for me to recover. Maybe I haven’t recovered and that’s what has me feeling so strange. Another part, I know, is missing my significant other. He’s away on business and I always feel the loss of his presence when he’s gone most acutely in the first couple of days. He’ll be back soon but until then, I’ll just miss him.

It’s good to be on my own right now. I’ve got some things to figure out. One thing in particular is why I keep smoking when I really want to quit. Obviously there is a part of me I seem to be punishing, a part of myself I seem to want to cause pain. Each time I smoke, I dislike myself for it and then it makes no sense that I continue it. It seems to me that in order to eliminate the desire to smoke, I have to find that part of me that thinks so little of myself that I must punish myself by doing something I don’t like. What in me wants to make me feel bad and why? It makes no sense. I can say that I love myself enough to see things differently and I mean it and I’m trying to see but yet I continue to do this one thing that really upsets my happiness. I want to be proud of myself but in this one area I feel so weak. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s time to address my weakness, that part of me that I hide away from the world so no one can see, that part that feels fearful, unloveable, too needy, useless and more. That part of me comes from a past that no longer exists, it comes from a product of growing up with two alcoholics for parents who never intended for me to feel invisible and unloved. They did love me but were just unable to show it. So, if I now know this, why do those feelings from yesterday still exist…what is really at the heart of it that won’t let me go. I no longer believe it.

Maybe it’s time for that fearless, searching moral inventory I’ve put off from my Al-Anon work. Dealing with the fact that I’ve learned how to unconsciously manipulate people for love through people pleasing activity. Maybe it’s that I never allow myself to show need and instead focus on trying to help everyone else. Maybe it’s that at heart I’m truly kind but that I also use that kindness to avoid all conflict and that act is a mechanism of control, trying to control my environment so things in it won’t hurt me. Maybe I don’t trust my own ability to cope with stress and pain without a crutch like my parents did. Maybe I need to admit that I don’t know how to cope with life because the only skills I ever learned in coping was to stop trusting what I see, think and feel. Growing up, those around me I was supposed to trust and who were supposed to love me, invalidated what I felt, denied what I saw and showed me they could never be there for me. They didn't intend to be so unloving but they were unloving with themselves and I somehow learned how to be unloving with myself with this one act I perpetuate with something that is always there when I need it even though it's likely killing me. I don’t know. The more I dig the more I see the insanity of what I find. It isn’t real any more. The only thing that is real right now is that I’m sitting here, filled with wonder, curiosity, courage and hope. I know I’ll find the answers I seek and entertain wholeheartedly the healing that will come if I can just manage to let it.
What part of me feels so unworthy? It’s ridiculous. Truly. I’m strong, I’m thoughtful, sometimes oblivious because I’m too focused on what is in front of me. I am content at heart for the amazing things I have and have accomplished in my life despite the immense odds stacked against me. The fact that I get up early and go to work at a job that pays me well, that I drive a nice car…I have well behaved (for the most part) children that I love and who love me...the fact that somewhere not too far is a man that love me, friends who adore me... I have these things because there is something wonderful within me that drives me to obtain these things even though I grew up in the welfare system with nothing much but what the church would give my mom for us. Were it not for food stamps and hand me downs from my cousins, I would not have had food to eat nor clothes to wear. Maybe growing up like that made me feel unworthy but as an adult I know that had nothing to do with me. It had to do with my parents and their total inability to provide for themselves and their children. They were miserable and lost people most of the time but at heart they were good. So it seems strange that I’m so put together and seemingly normal most of the time but at heart I don’t feel like I’m good or not good enough. How can that be? That makes no sense at all. Maybe it’s time I just let it all go. It doesn’t matter anymore. Yesterday is gone and there is no one to blame, no one to hold accountable except me for allowing myself to feel that I’m unworthy of happiness, health and love. I don’t really believe those things so why do I feel them somewhere inside? It seems I must or I wouldn’t hurt myself the way I do, smoking when I want to quit.

I’m going to be spending some time this week in reflection and in meditation…seeking only to heal the dark places inside that I no longer need to carry. Like childish things, it’s time to put those old feelings away. I acknowledge their existence and I see where they come from but I think its time I decide to no longer let them rule my life any more. Its time I choose to stop letting yesterday impact me today. Yesterday is gone. I don’t want to change it and I don’t want it back. I just want to choose healing. I want to release the anger and the fear from yesterday. I want to hold only hope for the future and serenity in the present. I’m not sure how to get there but I do know from all of my studies and my work that intent is everything. If I align my intent with my highest health, my highest good, my highest healing finally, I might just accomplish this one goal…even though at the heart of it, it sets me up to succeed with many other goals.

This is such a personal admission to post here in cyberspace but I feel like if I don’t let people see who I really am and that I struggle like everyone else and that I am not the perfect image I try so hard to project to the outside world, I might just disappear and that the dark places inside might actually grow instead of dissipating into the light of day. That’s my truest desire, to let it all go, all of the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the feelings of being cheated, anxious, emotionally abused. Its time to realize I did deserve better and although I didn’t have it, I can create that now and I can do that through my intent and my commitment to myself to work on this every day. I can’t set another stop smoking date yet but my plan is to give this line of thinking much more thought this week so I can loosen the grip this addiction seems to have on my very soul. I think that addiction finds the weakest spot in you and then grabs hold of it like a moth to a flame…until you can see your weakest part and make it strong and whole, you can’t loosen addiction’s grip…you can slip away from it temporarily but you’ll forever be at risk of it coming back and latching onto you. I think love is the only way. Heal that weakness, love that weakness because it is one of the things that makes you human, love that part instead of loath it and then the addiction cannot grab hold because then the weakness starts to become strength as it helps you build your character. Character building aspects of our personality, set within our memories, are strengths in the end…they are not weaknesses to be despised. I think learning to love your faults as well as your skills is part of the key that unlocks the chains. I’m going to think about this some more this week and my hope above hope is that by week’s end, I’m done smoking. That’s my hope and that’s what I want to hold on to. That’s why setting another quit date seems stupid to me. What I need to do is get to the heart of my desire and remove the desire and then it won’t bother me when I choose to stop. It feels like I’m so close. I’ve been gaining some measure of success. I haven’t smoked at work in a week. I’ve only smoked on the way to work and on the way home from work…If I go out for lunch I might have one. The rest of the time I don’t smoke and I’m okay. So, I’ve mixed up the habit and often times I can eliminate my desire but just not consistently enough yet. I swear I will get there…I want to get there this week. I want this to be my last week of dealing with smoking, of allowing that place inside of me to exist that I somehow seem to loath. I’m looking at it now. I’m going to retire to my room early this evening, do some exercise and some meditation…I need to do some things that make me feel good and are far away from smoking. I am preoccupied with the desire but not because I want to smoke right now. It’s because I don’t want to do it anymore and I want to wake up one day proud that I made it 24 hours, then 72, then a week and then 3 and go on never looking back at this one thing I’ve done for so long for reasons that were more harmful to me than smoking. It ends now and my life, with a new intent and purpose begins. I’ll work through my higher power to help remove all the defects that keep me grounded and strive to go on in a forgiving light, especially with myself, and to love myself enough to not only see things differently but to live differently. These are my very heavy thoughts for the day.

Peace!