This morning didn’t begin with an alarm clock. It began with a small, determined creature named Whiskey Kitty, who decided my face was public property. Purring, pawing, and administering what I can only describe as a full-contact affection campaign, she made sure I understood one thing clearly: I was loved, whether I was ready for it or not.
Somewhere in the middle of that feline love storm, I heard dishes fall downstairs.
Now that sound carries weight. It’s not just noise, it’s a question mark. At my age, with everything going on, my mind doesn’t whisper possibilities, it shouts them. I thought maybe something had happened to Mom. Maybe a stroke. Maybe something serious. And yet, I stayed in bed another twenty minutes before going to check.
That’s an odd kind of honesty to admit. Fear doesn’t always make you jump into action. Sometimes it freezes you in place, like your brain is buffering reality before it presses play.
When I finally got downstairs, she was fine. No emergency. Just gravity doing what gravity does best. A few fallen dishes, no fallen people. Relief came in quietly, like a tide going back out.
From there, the day turned practical.
We opened the box for the credit card reader, the little machine that stands between me and lost sales. It felt like opening a toolbox before a big job. Not glamorous, but necessary. We’re getting it set up, learning the buttons, figuring out the rhythm of it. One more piece of the puzzle falling into place for the book festival.
There are still complications. Parking is shaping up to be a beast. We might have to get there early, really early, like beating the sun to its own job kind of early, just to unload without chaos. Mom, being who she is, offered to stay the night at the hotel with me so we can make it on time.
That’s support. Not loud, not flashy, just steady. The kind that shows up when it counts.
And then came one of those strange little alignments life likes to toss in your path.
A pet sitter knocked on the door today.
Just like that. No searching, no scrambling, just a person appearing at the right moment. I asked her if she could watch Whiskey Kitty while we’re gone, and just like that, another worry found its place on the shelf instead of in my chest.
Whiskey will be cared for. That matters more than people might think. She’s not just a cat. She’s part of my daily rhythm, part of the reason I get up, part of the reason I try.
As for the smoking… I haven’t smoked.
I’m chewing the gum. Not perfectly, not heroically, just consistently.
The withdrawals are there. The cravings too. They’re not dramatic anymore. They’re more like background noise, a steady hum I’m learning to live with. And when I really think about it, those feelings were always there, even when I was smoking. I was just answering them differently.
Now I’m sitting with them instead of feeding them.
That’s the shift.
It’s not that the discomfort is gone. It’s that I’m getting used to it. Like breaking in a new pair of shoes that don’t quite fit yet, but you keep walking anyway because you know they will.
So that’s my progress.
Not perfect. Not finished. But real.
And through all of it, the love of a cat, the support of a mother, a little machine learning to take payments, and a man learning to breathe without smoke.
I still got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS NOW!!!
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