Back in 2015, in November, I vowed I would quit smoking when my last child left the nest. She was my drama queen, my stressor. She's always had troubles with anxiety ever since she was small. She finally went on anti-depressants and began to calm down when she reached 18. It was a long road for that girl. Back in 2015 I had the alcohol licked and didn't use that as an excuse anymore for dealing with my stress. The only thing left was my cigarettes. I clung on to those with all of my might. In my mind at the time, that was keeping my sanity.
I began cold turkey and was crawling the walls. Just too much going on all at one time. I knew if I wanted this to stick I needed to concentrate on one thing and work on the reasons first why I smoked. During most of the month in January I tracked those cigarettes. It gave me a summary at the end when I was most likely to smoke, what was triggering me the most. One thing I never filled out at that time was how I planned to separate from them. I was of the thought that 3 to 4 weeks this will all be gone. Make it through NML and it will all be gone. Somehow someway this will all disappear. It's only smoking.........
The emotional ties and ritualistic behavior is what makes quitting smoking so difficult. My life at one time evolved around smoking. For most of my time so far here on earth, since I was 12, I used smoking to replace "things" for me. The biggest "replacement" was a stress reliever. When I was angry, frustrated, worried, I thought smoking calmed me down. How many times I've said, OMG, I need a cigarette right now, I have to have a cigarette to calm down. I think I realized that more clearly one day about 2 or so months into my quit and my youngest called me because she was fighting with her fiance. Stressed to the max. I got frustrated, got off the phone and the first thought was I need a cigarette. I got up and did something else and the thought passed. That was elation for me later. I thought to myself, see you can do this. Those things never did anything for you.
So in closing, listen to the elders when they tell you this gets easier. This will never go away; it just gets easier. I remember writing to you all last year around this time, A flick of the wrist, the slightest of hand, it's all an illusion. Life pretty well stayed the same but I just look at it differently now. My daughter moved back home but it's only temporary until she gets back on her feet. She's grown, I've grown, we've both grown. It's calmer here now. I used to use this time every single year to mourn my mother's death. I changed things last year and planted a tree in her honor. Her body is gone but her soul lives forever. Whenever spring arrives, it will bloom again. That one red cardinal will come back and land on that tree every single morning until the snow flies again. We can't stop life; we can only appreciate what it teaches us......
