Eight

Okay, here we go, ANOTHER post about (not) smoking. Feel free to skip.


I got home from work last night and I could smell cigarette smoke. My niece and her boyfriend were over last weekend, and they both smoke, but I thought there was no way that smoke from a few cigarettes could linger that long, especially since I hadn't smelled it in the days between.

Then I went to get out of my "work clothes", and as I pulled my sweater off, I got a great big whiff of smoke.

I was in my boss's office yesterday, taking dictation, and he was smoking. The smell of the cigarettes had gotten into my frickin' clothes, and it didn't smell good. It smelled like I made a great big fat MISTAKE for the past thirty years. Did all my clothes really used to smell like that?! *sigh*


Time for the monthly counts:

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3 and now, had I not quit then: 7,200.

Amount of money saved: $1,284.00.


I was talking with another one of my nieces at Thanksgiving about quitting. To my surprise, my sister TIB, who quit herself almost four years ago, chimed in. It was surprising because TIB, who actually smoked even more than I did, if that's even possible, hadn't talked about her sudden quit. All I knew was that after being a heavy smoker for years and years, and after many, many attempts at quitting, she went to a hypnotist* and quit. Just like that.


So anyway, she told my niece and I that for the past week and a half, she'd wanted a cigarette in the worst way. She keeps ashtrays out on the back porch for smokers, and she explained how she could just go out there, light up a half-smoked leftover, and nobody would ever know.

And she kept talking. She talked about how if she were ever diagnosed with an incurable disease, and given a limited amount of time to live, she would start smoking again. And she would smoke as much as she wanted, every darn day, for as long as she had left.

"Makes sense to me", I said. Because it did.

And that's why it's so hard to quit. That mindset.

I just hope that four years from now, it's not me still craving a cigarette.

But even if it is, I'm not lighting up. I'm done with that.



I sure hope so, anyway.



On the bright side, I did not smoke on Thanksgiving day, for the first time in thirty years. I did not smoke on my birthday, for the first time in thirty years. I have not smoked a single solitary cigarette, not even a puff, since April 3. Even when those around me are smoking, I am not. I'm a quitter, dammit. Go me.




*or maybe it was an acupuncturist. Or a laser-thingie. I don't remember.