Fuck This is Hard
Since quitting smoking, today was the hardest day to date. I know that I have recently had some issues that would generally make me or any normal person sad (see some prior articles about what happened), but there was an extra, nefarious twinge.
Something all to underreported is the effect nicotine has on mental health, stress, anxiety, and in my case, clinical depression. It has a horrible half-life, but nicotine is a relatively powerful antidepressant so quitting it has similar repercussions of protesting prescribed antidepressants. You get brain zaps, foggy moments, and some gnarly bouts of depression. All for NOT doing something that fucking kills you slowly. Fuck smoking. This is why people say don’t start. There’s times that I wonder maybe I wouldn’t have any depression issues if I didn’t have nicotine in my life ever. Was I predisposed to this from my dad’s severe nicotine addiction? Jesus, fuck that drug.
I spent a lot of today incapable of taking a full breath, just shallow breathing all day. It was a sincere chore to get air deep into my lungs. This happens when I get depressed. Then I want to nap more which makes me less productive. Being less productive makes feel worse about myself and my stress raises. More stress elevates my heart rate and then I want to rest more. The cycle is strange, confusing, and self feeding. I have realized I can break it with marijuana though. Smoking a bit of pot actually breaks my cycle up a bit. I can forgive myself for being tired. I can forgive myself for getting hung up on a piece of work for a while. I can forgive myself for things I did in the past and feel confident moving into the future knowing I won’t do that again. It’s really kind of miraculous how being stoned is a significant mood increase without the down side like alcohol has.
My day wasn’t all terrible. I had a fantastic conversation with my new open-relationship partner. It’s the person that was my friendly ex, so please note the distinction of name change. We openly date other people, discuss our dates and dating experiences, and have just a couple base rules regarding like 24 hours between sex with others and work out any group things with verbal consent aside first. It’s actually pretty awesome. Her and I have a very loving relationship together and we love just being in each other’s presence. And our sex together is pretty great when we do decide to be physically intimate, which is about half our time together. Really, this is close to living the dream, but dreams are meant to be butt-fucked in the face. That’s the saying, right?