Get Back Up: You StopWe left the first installment of Get Back Up with a question, how do you stop the smoking that comes after a relationship ends? Here’s the answer: You stop. How do you stop smoking? You stop. How do you stop grasping for control in the fanatical tides of a sudden change in life, in love? You stop. One of the only real choices that we can ever make in life is to stop. It’s scary, sure. Yes, it may even mean your death (it probably won’t, but who knows, it may). We do, however, know for sure that smoking will mean your death. You’ve got nothing to lose by stopping. Stopping is an immediate practice. It does not come with a partner phrase “I am going to stop smoking and start getting healthy.” It is its own entity. It occurs only in the present or past tense, it can never come as “Tomorrow, I’m going to stop.” There is no such thing as a scheduled last cigarette. You will never quit what it is that ails you when you say “this is the last time that I am going to call him.” This is her last chance. This is my last cigarette. You stop. Then you get flooded. Believe me, if you truly stop, you will get flooded. You will become enveloped by old, bad feelings, the physical remnants of a life poorly managed, other unsuccessful relationships will become tenuous, memories will come back – the stopping comes before the nearly unendurable horrors of reality. This is when you need support. This is when you need someone to talk to. That person can be a therapist, family, friends, clergy, the lady whose been getting your coffee for you every morning for the past decade – whoever. This is when you reach the tiniest tendril you can muster out from inside of your bad puddle… And you ask for help. It will not be linear growth. You will not wake up one day suddenly cured of all that has happened to and through you. The pain will remain. But in the spaces of your being that you had been filling with smoke, there will be true empty space, true potential waiting for you to fill it however you please. And I promise you, those spaces, that purity and clarity, that potential will be worth the anguish that you went through to get to it. You are worth your life. Now get back up and take it. |
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