not really. i barely even qualify. if you know me well, you might still think i'm a smoker, and i wouldn't hold it against you. i was going to write a little eulogy to smoking for the one-month anniversary of my quit date. but i'm already starting to forget the romance i once shared with my cigarettes.
let me think... marlboro lights, marlboro light 100s, winston, camel lights, camel wides, parliament lights, nat sherman MCDs, delicados, faros, american spirits, bali shag... i smoked all of these regularly at one time or another. i reveled in smoking, the rituals, lighters, bumming smokes, giving cigs to a friend in need. i loved comiserating with fellow smokers - talking about how little or how much we smoke, how non-smokers just don't understand, how this tobacco is superior to that and menthols are just nasty, etc etc etc... all in a big old cloud of smoke.
i was 16 when i tried my first cigarette. lots of kids were smoking by then, not just the "bad" ones. i had scorned smoking whole-heartedly from an early age, so my decision to try it out says something about how desperate things got in high school. my friend had a pack that someone had bought for her a few weeks earlier. she slept over and, when my parents had gone to sleep, we went to the backyard. i really expected to hate the cigarette. i thought i would gag or cough or puke or pass out, but instead when i inhaled, i felt warm and light-headed and... well, good. after that first taste it became a weekend affair, to go somewhere and drink coffee and smoke three or four or more cigarettes.
still under age, i had to find ways of getting cigarettes illegally, which made it all the more thrilling. if i couldn't find someone who was old enough to buy them, it was only a matter of finding a cigarette machine. ahh, the good old days... the easiest one to hit up was at the waffle house, where we went to drink coffee and smoke anyway. within a few months i had even gotten a job there, which coincided with my increased dedication to the career of smoking.
i'll spare you the details of my habit for the next (oh god, was it really that long?) 14 years. i can't say that my life was more or less exciting because i smoked cigarettes. i wouldn't know because i was smoking my head off the whole time. it was just how i identified myself, sort of like being left-handed, but more aromatic and with frequent coughing.
anyway, whatever, i quit on july 5. i loved smoking. i said so frequently. i didn't really plan to quit. i just smoked myself sick on independence day. i was sick for two days and couldn't smoke, and then it didn't make sense to go out and buy a pack and start it all over again.
quitting really began on the third day... that day was awful. but a few days after that i decided that i shouldn't count how many days i had gone without smoking. it seemed like if i was counting, i was building it up more and giving myself a reason to smoke again. like i was testing myself to see how long i could go, and when the time was right i would reward myself with a cigarette. i don't know... i still can't really explain my own reasoning, but i do know that it got easier when i decided not to count. i wasn't thinking so much about smoking, or not smoking, after that. i think most of my physical withdrawal had passed by then, but i needed that edge for the mental part of it.
the time was right, i think. i still want a cigarette every now and then. hell, talking about it now makes me want one! but the feeling passes, like it never did before.
so goodbye cigarettes... thanks for nothing.
