Oh, Canada! Welcome back.

Eight Days! Wow. Eight Days! Huge. Eight Days! Wonderful!

Amazing! Congratulations.

You have been doing something that is huge, life-changing, affirming, and loving for yourself. I'm sorry about the meeting with your relative. Those digs, jabs, and challenges are more a reflection of the sad place your relative resides than about you. That said, I'm sure you were disappointed. I can walk into a room of 100 people and 99 of them may say, "Hey, Mac. Hail Fellow, well met! Great to see you, brother." But then there's always the one aloof person in the corner. The person who may meet me with a false smile or turned back. Now do you think I'm delighted and focused on the 99 people happy to see me? Nope, time after time, I'll focus on the one miserable bastard to the exclusion of all the goodness and wonder around me. Lousy odds in any game.

Seems to me you have accomplished much over the last eight days. Nothing wrong with feeling down or sad (and many here have gone through the same thing so you're not alone and you'll find no judgement), but I ask you to consider what a huge gift you've given to yourself weighed against an afternoon or evening with a relative (you haven't seen for some time) who may be attempting to crawl from a dark hole by pulling you down. Fuck that. If I can ask anything of you, it would be that you step back (from the relative and their potential hole) and look in the mirror to view a wonderful smoke-free winner who decided to give themselves the prize of life and love eight days ago.

Great things to you.