I quit smoking - Nine years ago.

I quit smoking –nine years ago.  Tonight as I left work I breathed in the fresh air and the tail end of someone else’s smoke as I rounded the corner away from the office.  I have never been disdainful (in fact once in a while I enjoy those whiffs more than I care to admit) of those who smoke after I quit.  I know how hard it can be.  To quit.  It was hard, even cancer didn’t quite put the brakes on the urge like I hoped it would.  Nothing seemed to work.

The love affair started somewhere after I turned sixteen, high school and a desire to rebel against something and perhaps be a little cooler than I actually was combined to create the perfect storm of a future smoker.  Add in a subsequent summer trip to Eastern Europe where everyone smoked everywhere - ashtrays in the office -I was hooked.  I smoked my heart out.  It was like the friend who was always there, a cigarette listened to my problems, my deep seated mistrust of myself as it connected or, in most cases, disconnected from the world – was solved for a moment when I smoked.  Nothing else mattered. With my coffee in the morning, with my drinks at night, with friends outside, at the office, at a party:  Smokers, my people.

I was never quite good at being a smoker, I always needed to have a drink of some kind to coat my throat from the searing the cigarette caused as it was inhaled: A coffee, ice tea, water, martini, something, anything to go with the smoke.  I would wake up in anticipation of that cigarette, some mornings it was the thing that got me out of bed.  My treat to myself. 

My boyfriends smoked, most of them, and the ones who didn’t, I am truthfully not quite sure how they put up with the stink.  Cigarettes smell bad. Period.  I used to coat myself in perfumes and mints to cover it up but ultimately nothing short of a shower and a laundry wash of my clothes made any difference.  There was the one time I smoked on an airplane (yes I am that old) and I was sick to my stomach from the stench of my neighbour’s cigarette.  I am not sure what kind it was but whoa it was too much, even for a fellow smoker.

I tried to quit a few times throughout the years but never had much luck.  I kept trying.  I would tell myself, you smell bad, this is bad for your health, this is- breaking the bank account-expensive, what in the world are you doing, still smoking?  How many years has it been?  I had cancer, I quit for a while.  I started again. And the cycle was vicious, quit, look longingly at all those people enjoying their few moments of peace as they breathed it in and breathed it out- and I would start again as soon as I was really upset over something or sometimes just because I could.   And then I quit one day for good.  How did I know it would stick?  I didn’t, I just had to have the faith.  I was pregnant; after all, I had to give it one good try.  One year later my husband quit.