Guilt, and the fear of failure

Guilt and fear; both have contributed in equal measure to my seeming inability to get a blog post up lately.

Now before anyone (else) jumps to the same conclusion as my good friend Mike Kellett… I have NOT been “shacked up under a blanket with a carton of Camel non-filters, having the time of (my) life”. But, funny, that he should mention American cigarettes.

Here it comes: The Confession.

House party.

Yet-to-quit-smoking friends.

They (and the conversation we’ve been holding) head outside.

I follow.

To make a long story short, at one point I reached over and snagged someone’s smoke and took a drag. ONE drag.

“Why?” you ask?  Lapse in judgment… moment of weakness… curiosity… In other words, I have no decent explanation.

The immediate result? Utter revulsion. In no small part due to the fact that the cigarette in question was a Marlboro. Gross.

Hot on the heels of that sensation were overwhelming feelings of disappointment, shame and guilt. And even though I suppose it could have been a much more serious infraction, I’m pretty adept at feeling guilty.

There may have only been a handful of people there to bear witness to this horrible thing I’d done. But I quickly realized that, in the interests of integrity, I would have to confess my crime to the world (or at least those inhabitants who are actually paying attention). And what if, before I managed to get up the nerve to do that, I did it again? Only my biggest (current) fear.

Enter Northern Health medical health officer Dr. Charl Badenhorst, who provided some very valuable advice on the day I announced my intention to quit. He must have had some idea that it would come in handy. Dr. Badenhorst believes that failure occurs in steps. Step one – a lapse. It’s a first slip, he says, that you shouldn’t worry too much about; beyond making corrections to avoid the next one. Step two is relapse, where you’re making the same mistakes over and over. Those lead to Step three – collapse. Yet even at this stage, he believes a person may still recover, even if they’ve almost given up.

I’m glad I saved his email. I think I must have had some idea that his advice would come in handy, too.

So… the event that I now choose to refer to as my "minor indiscretion” occurred four days ago. Rather than reset my progress-meter, I’m planning to go ahead and celebrate two weeks of tobacco freedom come 7:45 this Friday morning. That’s because despite one slip, I stopped well short of relapse, let alone collapse – and I refused to quit quitting.