Exposing My Most Shameful Bad Habit

And why it might have been what saved my life.

In a previous post, I *gingerly* mentioned that I smoked cigarettes after chemo…

My heart still sinks with shame for that decision. It’s a weight that pulls me into unimaginably dark places, then and now.

Which is exactly why I did it.

An unconscious part of me needed to live out loud my beliefs of being a failure. The emotions of it were so strong, so palpable, they had to be released somehow. In falling into such a great and devastating depression after chemo, I truly believed myself to be a tremendous disappointment to the people who had saved my life. I couldn’t hold all that shame and pain inside; smoking was an unconscious attempt to bring all those beliefs out into the light. Into my hands where I could hold them. Into my mouth where I could speak them out.

I wasn’t even 18 when I walked out of that hospital, thinking I’d simply step right into that long, healthy life I’d been promised as soon as (as long as) I beat a stage IVB diagnosis. Out I strolled, forty pounds overweight, bald, feeling optimistic and excited. Only to be greeted by a world that offered no time to reacclimatize to a ‘normal’ that had never fit me in the first place. And never would again, newly armed with the wisdom and clarity of what I’d experienced.