60 Hours and counting

Cry
-verb (used without object)
To utter inarticulate sounds, esp. of lamentation, grief, or suffering, usually with tears.

This became an important definition for me last night. The day went well, no real problems. The cravings were there, but I found ways to manage them and distract myself. After work, Nick and I went out for the first time together since the quit, and unfortunately the night didn’t go as well as I had hoped.

Nick’s softball team suffered an unfortunate loss during which I was really lucky to have a friend close by to talk to. I know that to a non-smoker a softball game seems rather harmless, but it’s quite the opposite; it’s stressful wanting your team to win so badly and being outside where you know that, if you wanted to, you could “light-up”. We both made it through the softball game unscathed, but we are dealing with the quit in very different ways, and the tension was starting to rise a bit.

Since an argument was what caused our quit to fail the last 2 times I decided to try to make light of the situation and on the way to dinner we managed to have quite a laugh together over a purple envelope. I realize I will not be able to explain it so I won’t try, but it still makes me smile. It was nice to release in that way; to be really happy just sitting next to each other laughing. Dinner went well, but it was the heaviest meal I’d consumed since Monday and gave me a pretty strong urge.

The car ride home is where it started. I won’t get into the details of it here as I’d like it to remain personal, and quite frankly I just don’t want to talk about it, but the tension broke. Nick and I got into it… pretty badly. I can only speak for myself when I say this, but the pressure and the emotion got away from me. To be honest I don’t even remember much of why we were arguing. Silly things mostly, it was the nicotine talking. After he dropped me off at home I cried. I cried and cried and cried some more, I wanted to smoke SO badly, but I didn’t. Instead I picked up the phone and called a friend. One of the greatest friends I have, this friend left their friends and the bar they were at just to spend a half an hour talking to me and calming me down.

After Nick and I both calmed down a bit we talked, both apologized and accepted the fact that we were both equally at fault for the blow-out and I cried some more. One thing I learned last night after all the crying and after reading the definition that began this post, it's okay to admit that I'm suffering. This is a difficult journey and I don't have to pretend like it's not. I'm strong for getting through it and committing to it, it's okay to be honest about it.

Although Nick may be going through this in different ways, he showed me last night that I'm not going through it alone. I honestly wish I could put into words how much I love him, but I don’t think that’s even possible. He is my rock and we WILL get through this together, for our future. Going forward, now that we understand the different ways we are dealing with this, we will lean on each other. I’m not kidding myself and thinking we won’t argue again during this process, but at least now we’ll be able to recognize it as the nicotine and not our relationship that’s volatile.