I don't necessarily have a lot of control in my life.
I can't control weather.
I can't control working conditions.
I can't control accidents, knocks in life, and the "shit happens" moments.
I can't control issues with my health in some ways.
I ultimately can't control other people's actions, reactions, and decisions.
I have other addictions, conditions, and predispositions that are hard to control and need to work on.
But what I can do is put forth the effort and control the one thing I can right now - and that's saying no to the almost daily temptations. I can say no to the thoughts of "just one won't hurt", "what's the point if we're all going to die anyways?", and "I'm a shitty person/partner/sibling/child/employee/boss/friend and I deserve the pain of addiction and destroying my mouth."
For three years I've said no.
No to my friends.
No to my colleagues.
No to my employees.
No to the gas station clerk.
No to the all of the stress, pain, surgeries, physical therapy, endless medical appointments, my body falling apart, the financial crunch and trying to catch up with not working for two years, the pressure I put on myself, my husband caving, and all the other things that silently whispered in my ear to just succomb and buy a pack or can.
There comes a quiet power with saying no.
For three years I've said no to myself.
Today I say no.
Tomorrow I will tell myself no.
I would like to say that every day in the future I would say no, but we all know addiction is fickle thing woven into our being. It's an unwanted part of us, but a regardlessly a part of us.
I don't believe a person fully understands addiction until much later down the road. It's not the acute symptomatic first few weeks. Everyone knows it's going to suck. It's expected, the severity different between each individual. The depth of addiction threads deeper and tangled thicker than we would ever realize.
It's the buried and latent habits that lay dormant in waiting that are the most dangerous.
It's the two and a half years down the road when you're hauling equipment to Oklahoma the first time since June 2016.
It's when you pull into a field that you have chewed in every single other time you've pulled into that field.
It's when you have to deal with a someone fucking up equipment because they were fucking around on their phone while driving a new giant $500k combine down the road.
It's when you get a call in the middle of night that your 16 year old employee that just started his promising sophomore year, that always made you laugh, that you just saw three weeks before in the tractor you now drive was killed with his father in a plane crash.
It's in the middle of the night when weariness is settled deep in your bones at too young of an age.
It's also in nephew's birthday parties when the cake and ice cream is finished and you're on the couch reading them the new book you got them.
It's in the movie theater after you're full of popcorn and hey, look. A giant spitter bucket.
It's in the shower.
It's after sex. (Let's be real here.)
It's in a crisp fall morning with a thermos of coffee.
It's in good. It's in bad.
I can't control the side effects of addiction.
The only thing I can truly control is how I react.
Saying no isn't easy. Saying no to yourself is even harder.
We have to somehow remember and hold on to the idea that there's beauty in everything and everywhere. There's beauty in fighting, hard times, struggling.
There can be beauty in saying no.
Today for the 1096th day in a row I've told myself no.
No matter how low and dark, hard and evil things are, I choose to find beauty in that.
HG. 1096 & quit.
