Good morning quitters!!
Another day of clean living brings forth many new questions and many new discoveries. I want to share a few with you all. Before all of that I have been reading the comments posted under my other posts and I want to say thank you to each and every person who made a comment. It is the strength in numbers that sets the example and gives me guidance in my person fight with this addiction. I wake up each day praying for another day of not smoking, and I pray that everyone who has made the choice to quit finds the strength to not smoke another day.
Anyways, my work shift is about 12 hours long. I interact with almost always the same people and I usually have a good relationship with them (proffessionally speaking). I did notice something today and I am turning it into my own litte game. Find the closet smoker. I had no idea how many people I interact with smoke. I call them closet smokers because I have never seen them smoke.
So here I was talking to one of the nurses of one of my clients and i had this acrid, almost repulsive smell wafting through my nose. I was sure I knew the smell. I just couldn't put my finger on it. About 5 minutes into the conversation it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like holy s%^t! I never knew this guy smoked! And as we were talking the smell was making me want to walk slowly backwards away from him. I had to know for sure. I asked him if he smoked and he looked left and then right, like he was going to divulge a national secret, and put his head down and said yes. He told me how many times he had tried to quit and was unsuccessful. He told me he tries to not smoke when at work, but he knows the inside of his car smells like an ash tray. He said he was ashamed to be working in the health care industry and was still smoking. I told him about this site and about all my failures in the past. I reminded him that all of our past failures are nothing more than an evolving blueprint for success.
I found out through half of this shift that I interact daily with about 10 closet smokers. All of whom were hiding it from their employer or their spouse or even both. I have really started to see that where there was once a stigma for the non-smoker, it is the smoker in today's age that wears the scarlet letter.
My wife called me about half way through my patrol and told me of an app that she downloaded. It calculates how much you have saved in your life and in your money by not smoking. It tells you how many cigarrettes you have not had since you quit. It even can track how long you will be dependent and the repairs your body must perform to bring back homeostasis. Without missing a beat I pulled over, (web surfing and driving do not mix kids), I looked the app and had like an epiphany. I never wanted to hug a complete stranger so much and at the same time want to kick my own ass.
I find it remarkable how quickly I am to back off from someone smoking or someone who smells like smoke. I give my co-workers some credit. They try their best to now smoke around me and even a few put out their smoke if they see me coming their way. I feel that I have the respect of the people I work with and associate in my life that I have all the support I need to be a non-smoker.
So here I am, rolling up on to day 4 of no smoking. I don't feel like any less of a man, and I sure don't feel that I need a smoke to make my day go smoothly. Every time I hack up something from my lungs I face the reality that I put it there and it is my responsibility to remove it from my body. I know in my past I have treated my body like an amusement park and all that is going to stop. I don't see the person I want to be in the mirror, I see the person making the choices to be a better, healthier and non-smoking person.
I have to give a ton of credit to my wife, Julie. She has done so much to learn about non-smoking she became a great motivator. I always tell her that I am quitting smoking for me and me alone. I thought she was hurt by that comment and she told me that she was quitting smoking for her and her alone. The fact that we are quitting together for each other is so that we have no else to blame but ourselves for any failures. She tells me how proud she is of me and how much she loves me and I in turn tell her the same things. But the difference lies in all the other times we have tried to quit we have said it like going through the motions. We say it now with so much conviction. Since we have quit smoking together we haven't even had a single argument. The last time we tried quitting I thought we were going to get a divorce. Each day Julie and I don't smoke just reminds me how much we truly love each other. we love each other because we want to be around in 30 years to still hold hands and remember the good old days.
