u/PurpleVengence

As said in the title.

Please keep up the good work! I know it feels endless, and can be incredibly draining and frustrating to continually be met with silence. But please keep going. If not on your own behalf, then on behalf of those that find themselves unable to.

Do it for our friends who are overwhelmed by this whole situation.

Do it for our friends who feel paralyzed when trying to post on social media.

Do it for our friends who are having chronic illness flares from the stress.

Do it for our friends who have too much else on their plate right now.

I appreciate each and every person who continues to fight for our little wolf <3

Got upset again, so I learned a whole new song for the cause. Why does this whole thing feel like that one scene in Twilight Princess, just reversed?

CW: Bereavement, Suicide, Nicotine Addiction

5 1/2 years ago, my real father passed away unexpectedly. I was 19 years old.

It was rough for a long time. For as terrible of a person as he was, he was still my father, and I still loved him.

I had only smoked on occasion prior to his passing, mostly socially. When he died, I nearly broke. I was already struggling greatly with my mental health prior to his passing. I had been grappling with SI for many years prior (including several attempts), and his death nearly pushed me over the edge.

While I managed to not attempt again, I was still low on coping skills. With few options available to me in my torrent of grief, I defaulted to what many others have in my shoes: I turned to substances.

I feel like the talk around substance abuse often gravitates towards drugs and alcohol, and while those topics are incredibly important, I find that having a nicotine addiction, like caffeine, has become almost entirely normalized.

I told myself for years that I wasn’t addicted. After all, it wasn’t like I was smoking a pack a day, or even half a pack. Heck, the vast majority of my smoking career was under a quarter of a pack a day. I told myself I could quit any time, that it was simply a choice I was making to cope.

A year ago, I found myself in a much healthier headspace than I was 5 1/2 years ago. I’ve been a certified peer support specialist since 2023, and feel that I have overcome a lot of the struggles and challenges when it comes to my own mental health.

But I was still smoking. It had become something I started to loathe— the urge to have a cigarette, the fact that I always reeked regardless of the fact that I myself had gone nose blind to it. I switched from menthols to regulars, hoping it would ease the transition. It did, but it still took way longer than i’d care for.

I started rationing out my cigarettes at the start of this year, and finally, on May 22, I had my final one.

It didn’t even hit me at first. I often didn’t smoke on weekends anyway, and that just so happened to be a long weekend. But then I kept going. The urge to go back was near blinding for the first week (expectedly, I know).

But I didn’t. I didn’t go back. I didn’t light another one. I know that someday down the line, the urge will most likely creep up again— tis the nature of addiction, after all. But I’m currently feeling confident.

The grief of losing my father still hurts. I expect it won’t ever not hurt (especially with reminders such as yesterday). But I think I’ve finally broken free from one of the shackles.

Thank you for reading, I really do appreciate it. I figured I’d share this here, as I have few people irl to celebrate this win with.

I hope you’re proud of me, dad.

For reference, I got every word up to #26 (cranberry) before pulling up the wikipedia page for *Fruit*. Yes, just plain old fruit. Finally found the answer by just trying different classifications of fruit (interestingly, “pome” wasn’t even green).

Like, I typically get nowhere with my hyperspecific guesses. Why in the hell would I guess that word?

And also minor gripe that #2 and #3 were closer than 4-7, but who’s counting?

*eye twitches*