So I started this blog at least one forever ago, and I started it when I was trying to quit smoking.
I am trying to quit smoking again.
I have had 9 smokes and 4 drags since May 2, six days ago. Normally I would have had at least 60 cigarettes between then and now... so I've come a long way... but I've tried and failed so many times, it feels unnatural to count on whatever optimism I may feel at any given moment.
I want to write about "whatever optimism" I've felt, because I as usual feel "really confident" about "this" attempt.
It's Friday.
Last Sunday, I had 0.
On Monday, I had 4.
On Tuesday, I had 4.
On Wednesday, I had 0.
On Thursday, I had 3 drags.
This is Friday.
I have had 1 smoke and 1 drag. I have been on yellow Spirits for many months now. I made today's One Smoke last for three light-ups, between like 9PM and 11:30PM., and just now when I put it out and it felt like too soon, I bummed a drag off my boyfriend's Parliament.
I've felt excited lately about how the occasional drags I've had have made me feel light-headed and woozy-weird.
I spent almost $8 on a big box of 120 dum-dum pops, which seemed like a stupid expense at the time until I remembered I was spending almost $8 on 20 cigarettes every two or three days. Wowza.
I haven't had a cigarette while driving for almost a week. Cutting out *that* smoke is imperative, important.
I have set a date for nixing smokes altogether: May 22.
Between now and then, I have allowed roughly a week of "less-than-five" and a week of "less-than-one".
I have done well so far and "this time" I feel more optimistic than ever.
I'm sick of smoking, and sick of quitting, and sick of guilt...
...and in many moments recently, during the days I've survived without any cigarettes, I have felt a peculiar clarity. Call it nicotine withdrawal, or whatever, but it's been a remarkable, *FRANTIC* clarity: like I observe the world around me through a bizarrely Present Hi-Def.
The trees here in Missoula bearing their new leaves look greener than they did a week ago.
I save myself from wanting to smoke in the car by flipping the radio station constantly or by listening to CDs I can't help but sing along to.
I harbor about a million separate, private fears, since I have failed at every other attempt to quit smoking.
...but there's, I'm sure of it....
... I'm sure there's something about this quitting.
There's something about quitting this time.
...Something, because this time, I am approaching ten years.
A decade in the garbage can.
Ten years smoking cigarettes.
I can look back and remember the day, the circumstance, the car, the lighter, the street, the feeling.
I was 17. I was with my best friend for-seemingly-forever. She was 16. She had been smoking for a while, and so had all our other friends, but I had 'held out'.
I was seeing some guy, and this day in the late summer of 2005 something had gone abruptly, terribly, horribly wrong, and I still can't write about it without feeling squeamish. Let's just say, if anybody needed or wanted or was desperately searching for a reason to light up and deeply inhale a cigarette, I had one on that day.
We were in my friend's burgundy Honda sedan, headed out from her mom's house and we had crossed her suburban street and were headed across another suburban street in our small VA town. This street was about a block in length, and I remember finishing my story of the day's horror and demanding of her, with a defeated sigh, "Gimme a cigarette."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes."
I was.
That was in the mid-late summer of 2005.
It's May of 2015 now, and I just turned 27, and I am livid about having become yet another slave to the tobacco companies...
They caught me when I was young.
That's where and how they catch everybody. I'm sure of it.
I was 17, starting to get into The Pixies, and Wilco and Fugazi, and Jane's Addiction, and I was 17, and nothing could touch me, and I was free, and I could drive a car now, and I was hot, and I was well-read, and I had big ideas, and I was smart, and I was never going to get older or smarter than I was already.
.......................well, now I am 27, and I want to snatch my life back away from The Cigarette and reclaim it as my own. It's astonishing, how pathetic one can feel when embarking upon the odyssey that is quitting smoking.
It's awful. It's like everything that you have ever known turns into something impossible.
How am I supposed to drive without a cigarette?
How am I supposed to get through a phone call to my mom or dad?
How am I supposed to sit outside with my late-morning coffee on a Saturday?
How am I supposed to celebrate a good song that I love?
How am I supposed to step outside of a bar where a good band is playing alt-rock?
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
quit
smoking
my
regular
beloved
phenomenal
cigarettes?
I have many ideas to try to help myself, because I need help, as do all addicts trying to nix the nicotine.
1: Be Better Than Everyone.
This one is harsh, but sometimes tough love works. Think: Everyone that's dicked me over, been a total irresponsible roommate / lover / friend / general douchebag. They all smoked cigarettes. Be even better than them by succeeding in quitting.
2: Feel Innocent, Accept Life
Colors are brighter, breaks from work are more serene, and little every-day moments spent in the Present are experienced with such clarity that I feel almost frantic while experiencing them without cigarettes. Smokes just rip me away from the purity of life.
3: Remember Being Small
When I was a kid and my dad was my idol, I was furious with him for smoking. When I was about 10, it was the afternoon at his house in rural VA and he was taking a nap after work. I knew where he hid his carton of cigarettes. I opened an entire pack, split open every cigarette, and dumped the tobacco onto a paper plate. I woke him from his nap proudly announcing that I had prepared dinner. He was bewildered and happy and came to the table to find the contents of 20 precious cigarettes split open and spread out on a paper plate.
4: Love Yer Own Damn Self
I want to respect myself, love myself, cherish myself, help myself.
Remaining addicted to cigarettes makes these things impossible.
In order to respect, love, cherish, and help myself, I have no choice but to do so by nixing cigarettes. Smoking only fuels the negative in my life. As a smoker, I don't respect myself. I'm guilty. In part, I hate myself. In part, I am embarrassed to be who I am. I don't help myself. I hurt myself. I am aware of this. I know that this has to change. The only way it can change is if I quit smoking.
5: duh
Smoking is bad for you. Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.
Not smoking is like being an angel. Good good good good good good good.
I have been a guilty smoker for a long time.
Many people I know just light up on the sidewalk. I can't do that with a clear conscience. I mean, if it's 1AM and it's just the bar crowd prowling the streets with little coherency, I can deal... but if it's 4 in the afternoon and I have a lit cigarette and I see a man with his 6 year old daughter walking toward me, I will feel like a horrible person.
Yeah I care what people think, and maybe that's not really a good thing, but also maybe I don't want to be a smoker.
When I was a kid I saw adults smoking and instantly thought "EW!!!!"
Now, when I am an adult and smoking and I happen to see a kid nearby or half a block away, I think "ew!!!" toward myself. I feel their pending disgust. I try to hide my cigarette - fold it behind my hand, my hip, but kids see everything. I don't want little kids to see me that way. I see myself as that little kid and I see myself as an adult smushing out a cigarette butt and tossing it into a garbage can or ashtray and I see my lungs as they strain to inhale the smoke that my brain has been fooled into believing is necessary.....
...and I'm pissed.
....and quitting makes me irritable and even more pissed, but I'll get over it......
....god dammit.....
Why is it that smoking CIGARETTES is legal but smoking POT isn't!?!?!?!
and on a purely random note, Why is SALVIA legal at all?????!?!
why why why why why why WHY!?!?!
...whatever.
Hello, dum-dums.
Hello, interior superiority complex. I will use you to help myself quit smoking.
Be better.
Whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes.
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