Craving or Emptiness?

Back in '06 when I quit on Unofficial Nicanon, I made copies of posts that spoke to me.  This was one of them.  Thank you, David, for the permission to reprint it.

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Hi gang,
I wanted to discuss something with you and see how it adds up for
all of you.
Now that I've been cigarette and nicotine free for the last  48 days, I wanted to describe  for you what often overcomes me at certain times of the day.  For a while now, the word "craving" or a kind of hunger to smoke does not fit as a description for the way I feel regarding cigarettes.   Rather, I feel a kind of emptiness, a
kind of sadness and lonliness that is different from depression.  It is as if something is missing biochemically in my body and I "just can't have it any more"
Ya see, I feel like I've made my peace with giving up smoking.  For me it is just no longer an option.  It is like ending a very bad disfunctional relationship.  You realize more than ever that it's just not going to work out, that it'll end up killing you.  So, I've accepted that I just can't live with her anymore.  I just can't live with cigarettes.  But now I have to come home alone to an empty house.   Not only did I live with them but I worked, ate, relaxed, well... I did just about everything with them.  Other than breathing and blinking my eyes, I believe the physical hand to mouth, suck, inhale and  blow out smoke action was the thing I most did in a given day.  I was a cigarette smoking machine turned on from  the time I woke up to the time I went to bed.
However, the  "craving" for a cigarette left me rather early in the game but this emptiness is still very much present.  I realize this will take time.  I also found the words I read in yesteday's post by one of you concerning pain to be helpful insomuch that one should not always run from pain but  take advantage from that which one can learn by experiencing it.  I believe there is something fundamentally important to my going through this psychological pain and disconfort in order for me to regain recovery and establish a
newer and healthier balance with my body.  Learning to live with and accept pain or disconfort, I believe, is part of my learning process and one that I have been somewhat  unwilling to do in the past.
These are some of my thoughts and although I know that each of us are in different parts of our journey and each of us are unique,  I wanted to know how some of you experience this loss of not being able to smoke and what words have you found to describe it.  "Craving", "emptiness", "pain";  what's it like for you?
With love and hope,
David Callahan