Another Wednesday. Overwhelmed.

And we're back. It's been a pretty rough week, but good. Starting chantix has certainly helped my overall feeling about smoking and quitting. I'm only on Day 3 today, but I can already tell that it's working.

Sorry for missing you all yesterday. Two nights ago was pretty rough. Forrest woke up about an hour after I went to bed, and was pretty fussy so I spent about an hour and a half bouncing and patting, and didn't get back to sleep until after 5 am... so, last night was a bit of catch-up for me.

Okay - we're officially on Day 6 of the quitting phenomenon. I'm at 6 cigarettes over the last 6 days. Not as good as I was hoping, but not terrible either. To be honest, I'm pretty damn proud. Even though I've still been feeling the need (just a bit), I've really been able to NOT think about it too much.

I want to be honest about my smoking because, if anyone is reading this, and if you're also trying to quit, it's important for you to know that while some people are able to just STOP smoking, for me, that's not been how it's worked.

It's easy to start believing that you aren't going to succeed. To feel like there isn't anything that you can do to make it work. But a nice, cheesy thing to remember is that line from Batman Begins. "Why do we fall down? So that we can get back up."

Yesterday I talked about the hiding/lying/depressing spiral. It's such a vicious cycle - and while a part of me recognized that it wasn't healthy (for me, for my relationship/marriage, for my health), I still didn't know how to break the cycle. So, like I said, for several years it continued that way. From time to time, I would think about quitting, and from time to time, I would actually quit for a little while.

But it didn't happen for long. And then I would start back, smoking from time to time, then smoking a LOT, and then the hiding and lying... all of it again.

Was it Mark Twain who said "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it thousands of times."

I'm not there, and I know now that I won't be, ever. For all of my talk, this is the first time that I've ever truly believed that I could quit - forever.