Strength from the quit, or quit from the strength...

Hello in your journal, Marti! :)

Way to go on your oracle cards! And congratulations. 

Fear is really what underlies all of the negative stuff, including our addictions. Rooting out the cigarettes from your life doesn't get rid of the underlying fear, and often it just moves on to something else, such as suddenly beginning to believe that you can't stay quit long-term. Or some other opportune manifestation of fear, like fear of being hit by a car, or fear that that mole on your left thigh is cancer, or fear that your future will be grim. 

I think you have enough love for yourself to never again smoke a cigarette. And I think your love and respect for yourself will grow with each day as it has been growing since the day you stopped smoking. And I think that slowly this love will remove your underlying fear so that manifestations of it are no longer necessary. 

Love, respect and compassion kill fear. <3

You know what....I thought some more about what I wrote here, which was pretty esoteric and perhaps not very useful. I think I'll (in general) start using my learnings from my alcohol quit which has lasted for ten easy years (and I was a pretty hardcore case, like I am with cigarettes).

For the first several years, I said to myself that perhaps when I am in my eighties or something, I'd on occasion have a glass of very fine sherry. In other words, I never fully closed the door on drinking, which also meant that I would never fail since I had just moved my next drinking moment way into the future. I held that thought for several years, and in many ways it was a comforting thought.

Somewhere, perhaps after five years sober perhaps, something interesting happened.....I started thinking that I would DEFINITELY NOT want to drink a glass of sherry when I am in my eighties, phewee.....why would I want to drink a substance that can kill you just as surely as cigarettes can? I had totally lost my interest in alcohol and the thought of drinking it, now or later, seemed and still seems absurd to me. 

So now I'm saying to myself that I'm not smoking right now, but perhaps when I'm in my eighties I'll whip out an elegant Benson & Hedges and a gold lighter once in a long while and smoke it (my grandmother used to do that, for social-fashion effect). Thus, I'm not never-ever-ever not smoking again, it's just now I'm not smoking. As I'm writing this, I can feel how it takes a lot of pressure off me, psychologically. I'll let you know in five year's time whether it worked in the same way as the alcohol quit for good.

I hope this helps....

Marti, as you know, I seldom wander into the mysterious world of the blogs...

The strength is yours and yours alone. Smoking maybe hid and disguised the strength, but it was ever there.

I know that you will triumph, over worry and over fear. You will be absolutely grand Marti. I just know it.