How a coca-cola & pop-secret made me realize it’s okay to have a cigarette every now and then

Learning that healing isn’t about self-help books, attending therapy sessions, or meditating for an endless amount of time.

Okay, so I get how funky this essay sounds, but it was written on an evening that I had (you guessed it) an iced Coca-Cola, and a bowl of pop-secret *homestyle* is the best you can’t tell me any differently.

I tend to have the most profound realizations in the most everyday moments, and that is what living consciously is about. Seeing the lessons in the ordinary everyday things we do, because there is much to learn.

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Learning that healing isn’t about self-help books, attending therapy sessions, or meditating for an endless amount of time.

No, I think these are just the tools in which we learn how to “heal”:

but what if we just fucking be. Do you ever stop working on yourself?

I recently realized I began attending therapy to help me on my healing journey moreso, I realized it’s about letting go (not condoning), to embody all that which is already within: joy, love and peace.

It’s about simply enjoying the things that bring you joy -

Like having a snack without feeling shame around not eating healthy.

Enjoying the iced coke and bowl of popcorn without feeling like I’m a bad person or not the person I want to be if I don’t go to bed within the next half hour.

I don’t think we were meant to live within the confines of these boxes we feel we must put ourselves in.

I, too, started buying into this narrative that a person on a healing journey, sets strict boundaries for themselves so they can cultivate boundaries, and confidence by “following through”.

While going to bed early, and having routine and structure does help me in many ways, I forgot that life is to be lived, and it’s okay to not always eat the best, go to bed late, or scroll my phone;

I shouldn’t eat past 9:30

I have to be in bed by 10

Don’t bring your phone to the bedroom; no doom scrolling

Cigarettes are bad

Alcohol is bad

Don’t eat that cookie; have some yogurt instead

On and on, this inner dialogue, created by the mental confines of just that: the mind

And we forget to just let our fucking hair down for a while!

So as I decided this one evening to say fuck going to bed early and having a “healthier’ snack, I’m going to eat popcorn and stay up late!!

With this profound realization that I need to let “loose” every now and then, I remembered when I went and had a smoke with a friend of mine.

The other night, I decided to have a cigarette after dinner with a friend. As a former smoker, I seem a lot of my achievement and this fact that I was easily able to quit smoking.

But when the social aspect of smoking hit me like a ton of bricks, and I suddenly craved one after not having any desire whatsoever for months, I immediately thought, “oh I am bad.”

I shifted my thinking from “oh i am bad, i broke the ‘rules’” to “bitch, it’s okay to have a cigarette once in a while”.

So this is how a Coca-Cola and pop-secret one night reminded me it’s okay to let your hair down. Life isn’t meant to keep us bound to these chains we label as self-confidence, our best selves. We aren’t these projects we need to pick at and refine every single moment of everyday. I think becoming our best selves is learning when to follow through and say fuck it.

I’ve been so strict with the rules I created for my life in the need and desire to “heal” and become this idealized version of myself.

I am so used to this mundane routine and thought of “not tonight, it’s a school night”

I long to be the mother who wakes up her kid randomly on a Tuesday night to go watch a movie.

To be the wife, who lets her hair down and lets her guard down more so she doesn’t succumb to pressures she places on herself.

To be the wild, within, who owns it all - the primal need to dance naked, and howl at the moon and truly, I mean truly not give a fuck.

You’ll become the mystery people can’t quite wrap their heads around because you learned what life is really about - and it’s not about this linear fixed box we walk in circles trying to separate our desires with “what is right and what is wrong”.

And that’s how a coca-goal & bowl of pop-secret reminded me it’s okay to have a cigarette with a friend occasionally.

-love and light, nichole