This post has been eaten by my phone three times.

Maybe this time it will stick?

I'm typing with my thumbs, so I will make this succinct.
I quit smoking six days ago, and I feel like shit.

The reason I quit then as opposed to tapering off until the required 3 weeks before my surgery was a terrifying visitation in a dream by a deity from a religion I knew next to nothing about. I will elaborate later.

Even so, I am sitting here in the lobby watching for people to go out the back to see if they can spare a smoke. No luck. Probably just as well.

I am having trouble reconciling my feelings of worthlessness to the blessings I've been given. Matt got a promotion, both Kate and Paul are working, and I sit at home, at a loss as to what to do with myself. I feel I do not deserve the roof over my head.

There is a lot of noise in my head, as if I am aware of every minute process in my brain. It often paralyzes me in the middle of trying to do something, like getting dressed. I will sit there, half-dressed, staring at the wall, while my brain buzzes away. My train of thought is less a train and more like a hundred boxcars all going in different directions on separate, whirling tracks. This isn't new, just more pronounced, now.

I am still feeling a deep loss of identity. I have been unable to motivate myself to make Matt's room "our room." I am overwhelmed by things like laundry. We don't even have separate piles anymore. I used to do all my own laundry and hang them up right away. I don't have a door to close when I want to be alone. This reminds me of my couch-surfing/homeless days and triggers me.

Meanwhile, Kate and Paul wasted no time in making themselves comfortable in what was once my space. Irrationally, I feel stolen from, even though I had all but abandoned my room for months before, due to severe anxiety and fear of sleeping alone.

Kate and I rarely see each other, because of her work schedule, and she and Paul have the same issue.

Everyone is busy and productive. I can't even muster the ability to take a shower. I am in pain all the time, and I can't take anything for it. I feel like I am just leeching off others for support. I feel like cutting myself, but I would rather have a cigarette.

I have realized that cigarettes have become part of my identity, too, and it's just another aspect of myself that I have lost. (Also, I associate them with Loki. We'd often share.)

But when a Voodoo god of death tells you to "quit smokin' or he'll start diggin'", you kinda think twice.