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So, at about the point when my dance card was as full of self-destructive behavior as I could stand, my then 7-year-old son (see "impossibly beautiful, perfect..." below) asked me how long I'd been smoking. I did some math, and said, "I guess about 9 years. Why?" he said, "A lady talked to our class today about smoking, and if you smoke for longer than 10 years, the damage to your lungs is permanent." (We can talk later about the fact that my son was born 10,000 years old. I had nothing to do with it.)
"Well," I said, "I guess I'll have to quit before it's ten years, then." My son, the opportunist, the earnest fellow, the ancient and wise, said, "Promise?" And I did the unthinkable- I formed the unbreakable oath. I pinky swore to quit before it was 10 years. Because I knew I had started smoking sometime around Christmas, I internally calculated the ten year mark to lie somewhere around my 30th birthday. So, nearly a year from that date, I made the easy promise to quit sometime in the next year.
I started quitting on December 4th, just in case I needed a couple of runs at it.
On the list of things that will suck the marrow out of your bones, quitting smoking ranks pretty high. For example, here are the things I would rather do than quit smoking:
1. Have un-anesthetized dental work
2. Cut off the tip of one pinky
3. Run a marathon in a bikini and flip-flops
4. Skydive
5. Shave my head every month for a full year
and last:
6. Eat poo.
The number one reason not to start smoking? Someday, you'll have to quit again.
It was horrible.
So horrible, in fact, that on day three I was standing in my kitchen shaking and crying, trying to find some rationalization for smoking just one little tiny cigarette. In a fit of desperation I called the Tobacco Help Line, a national smoking cessation support agency. Here's the conversation I had with the lady:
Nice Lady (NL): "So, you're on day three? Good for you!"
Me: "I don't feel very good."
NL: "How do you feel?"
Me: "I'm kind of freaking out."
NL: "What do you mean, 'freaking out?' You're really craving a cigarette?"
Me: "No- I mean 'I want to run into the wall over and over again until I pass out' freaking out."
NL: "You want to hurt yourself?"
Me: "I'm open to the idea, yes."
I doubt I could have really accomplished too much with my running into the wall plan- we lived in an old building, and had horsehair plaster walls. I'd just have lost my deposit and bruised myself up.
The really awful mind-bending, consciousness subverting addiction death-throes ended after about four days. Those four days, however, were like being unplugged from the Matrix. I wanted to live in the real world, the one where cigarettes didn't actually make me a better person, just an addict, but it was very messy and unpleasant to leave the fake world, where I had a reciprocal relationship with smoking. We were pals, in that world. In the real world, smoking was such a crummy habit that it never actually alleviated the symptoms it created. And what other relationship would I be in where I gave literally everything, and in exchange, my pal tried relentlessly to kill me? (We'll talk about my boyfriends later, by the way.)
So, I unplugged. And about five days later, I started to take all my life back- my long drives in the car- those were mine! Smoking couldn't take them from me. Big, delicious meals? Mine. Cup of coffee on the porch in the morning? Mine! Bottle of wine in a smoky bar? Mine, too. (I know, I know- but at the time, it was a victory- I could separate them.)
Smoking got to keep nothing of me. Nothing. It's been six years- seven this December 4th.
That victory got me thinking about the whirling mass of coping mechanisms and "medicines" I had made part of my schema. I thought of the interdependence of these self-destructive things as a garage filled to brimming with junk- junk I couldn't even identify through the filthy windows. I decided that since I had been able to get rid of smoking, thereby freeing up a narrow walkway in the junk-packed garage, I could start going through everything.
This is where it all really began.
