I Quit.

When I was seven, I begged and pleaded and yelled at my dad about smoking.  “Ugh.  Why do you smoke Daddy?  It smells bad!”  We spent summers in California with him and one of those trips included a drive across the country… for the fun of it.  I think I was nine or maybe ten, I very clearly remember a conversation when he told me that he started smoking on long drives to stay awake.

The first time I tried a cigarette, I was twelve.  A friend had an older sister who was maybe seventeen or eighteen at the time.  That means she was very cool.  We stole one of her Marlboro Reds and went outside for a walk and smoked it.  We were promptly caught.  We had to give a speech about smoking and our bad choice, in front of our classmates so we could stay in Youth to Youth.  It was humiliating, couple that with the violent hacking we experienced during our illicit cigarette sharing and I vowed never to smoke again.

In ninth grade, another friend’s older sister taught me how to inhale, so I knew what I was doing.  In high school, none of my close friends smoked.  I would still sneak one now and then.

When I was nineteen, I consciously decided to start smoking.  I think I have it written in my journal somewhere, but the gist was a big middle finger to my parents.  After all, I was an adult.

I smoked through college.  I smoked in my first apartment. And my second.

I met Dave in the ‘smoking room’ at work. 

I smoked outside in my wedding dress at our reception.  Here is my pretty bag, right there next to my cigarettes.

I have quit smoking maybe fifteen or twenty times in my life.  Sometimes for a few hours, once for six months, but inevitably I would start again.  On 9/11, I remember driving out of my office complex first thing and right across the street to buy a pack of cigarettes, that time I had quit for almost a month.   Without a thought started right back up.  That is what cigarettes do to you.

Then, February 13, 2006, just like all of those other times before, I quit smoking.  I tried the patch for a day and it made me feel awful, so I just quit.  Cold turkey.  As I was writing this post, Dave reminded me that he was on a business trip {he was also trying to quit} and I yelled, “Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day!” into the phone.  I only tell you this to illustrate that it wasn’t easy, I was struggling.  Though now, after eight years, my view on just how awful it was has been softened considerably.

I quit for me.  And now that my children are here, I never want them to think it’s OK to smoke or see it as cool.  Worse yet, not even take notice it because it’s their normal.

It took me a long time to think of myself as a non-smoker, there is a new normal you need to find.  Sometimes, eight years later, I still have dreams about smoking.  Or a cup of coffee in the morning has me thinking about that first deep inhale.  Sometimes, when the adrenaline of stress flushes though my body, the only thing I want to do is smoke.  Cigarettes are like an old friend, they’re familiar and relaxing and the memory is usually better than the reality. 

The reality of cigarettes is, I can’t pick one up because it will feel like coming home to a place I don’t want to live anymore. 

That is the price of addiction.  That, and the $10,000 I have saved myself over the last eight years. 

I wish I knew what it was, that magic thing, that made February 13, 2006 any different, I’d bottle it and give it away.  I would only say this, if you have someone in your life that smokes, believe them when they tell you that they are quitting whether it is the first time or the twenty-first.  To you over there smoking… Keep trying because one of these times, your resolve is going to be tougher than the nicotine.  Promise, it’s worth the fight to get to the other side.