Stand in the Rain

I was out of cigarettes today. It is that time of the week where I am counting the hours until my paycheck comes in…”OK I have enough gas to last until Friday morning”. The embarrassment of it all. Only smokers can relate to the remainder of the day. OK I have been without all day, I can make it till Friday-heck if I make it till Friday, I can just keep going and quit. I HAVE done it before. Twice I have truly quit-for up to four years the first time, and one year the second time. I KNOW how to quit. Yoga and juice and listed reminder of the reasons to quit…that was the first time. The second time was sheer will power, along with my list of reminders. This time I know all the reasons, I don’t need a reminder, yoga is frequent part of my life (though not for several months now, I am just scrawny with no muscle tone) and I just really am not in the mood for exerting that kind of will power. I have determined that the next time I quit smoking, it will be with the e-cigarette. Many, many people I know have unintentionally quit using e-cigarettes. It is just water vapor and nicotine. It satisfies the nicotine craving, but that is all. There is no head rush that follows a drag after not having a cigarette all day. I have used one for up to a week and the cravings left, but then when I had ten dollars and needed more than an e-cigarette from the store, opted for the carbon monoxide poison sticks. Point being…I am gonna quit and I know how…just not today  . I remembered that I have to navigate to the courthouse side of town EARLY in the morning for a test…in fact I have to study for that tonight. This is not the night to quit. So…I did what broke smokers do…I dug for change. I even had some gold dollar coins and then the wanna be investor in me said “That is GOLD stupid”, so I took the six bucks worth of quarters and nickels and went to the store for some cheap BASICS which I have not smoked in about eleven years, and got a single role of toilet paper. Yeah…definitely that time of the week. I was about to have a one of my self hating moments, when memories of counting change and being broke and miserable over a decade ago haunts me”…you are a loser -you aint no better than a loser, your brother buys you lunch and you dig for change for your cigarettes.

It had rained suddenly and forcefully before I had left. Lightening and thunder, the whole works, with flash flood warnings all over the place. It was so fierce that I had unplugged everything. It was the sexy kind of rain. I don’t know why. I’m weird like that. There are different kinds of rain. The aggravating drip dripping kind that doesn’t do anything but mist your windshield enough to turn the wipers on. Then there is the dreary depressing kind, which is just above the rain forecast that never actually happens. Then there is the kind that lets loose and if it isn’t lightening you want to play in it. If it is you wanna curl up with your guy somewhere…ok so that is another blog but you get the picture.

When I got back to my building I lit up under the awning over the back door and watched the sky. I thought of my state of affairs and how I had not progressed a whole lot in life. I will be thirty one in two months. A voice came to my head that said “you ain’t no different, you ARE special -but you ain’t no different”. A good man and mentor in my life for years, said that to me just last week. I think he was saying that I am not above pain or heart break, I’m not above giving into my demons or reacting in ways that I shouldn’t. But someone who loved me would accept that about me. Watching the rain, I equated the saying to the old saying “it rains on us all” (or something like that) and I accepted about myself. Everybody has their demons, every body has their weaknesses and makes their mistakes. I do too. I finished my cigarette and stood in the rain and subsiding thunder. It felt crisp and more refreshing than a shower. We all have rain in our lives, and just like we have to face ourselves-cause ain’t none of us so different that we are not affected, or infected-we sometimes can stand in the rain. I stood in the sexy rain  . If one solitary person doesn’t think I’m worth seeing through the rain…well somebody else will think I am. Because I ain’t so different that I don’t have it, but I am special enough to stand in it with.