Cravings

[Britt228]

I've been having pretty strong cravings this week and I've had to repeat the reasons I quit in my head to get through my day. Mostly I quit for my health, and financial reasons, but  it just dawned on me how many moments, little and big I've missed over the last 10 years because I was smoking.

I've walked out of movies, rushed dinners, left friends in bars, smoked in the snow, the list is endless......Last year my aunt went into Hospice( she smoked her whole life). As her only niece I was there, I left for just a moment, to go smoke  on the ground floor.  I came back and she had passed. My  family was there, and I was downstairs  taking cover from the rain, chain-smoking. I didn't see that for what it was when I was a smoker. I saw it as if I had left to use the restroom, or left to get a nurse. As a non smoker I see it as one of thousands of moments cigarettes take from you, that you'll never get back.

Even at the service, I went back and forth with a group of my family from the wake to the parking lot, all of us remarking on how she was the youngest of my aunts and uncles. That day a seed was planted, and I tried 7 times to quit last year, always buying a pack after a day or two. I hate how much control cigarettes had over my life, and my choices, this quit has to stick.