I have never been the kind of smoker who is constantly on the verge of stopping. Smoking has been part of who I am for many a year. It started off as a secret, something bad to do and keep from my parents. A secret that I thought, I realize now, was cool. At the time I somehow thought that coolness wasn't a factor but I think it was...I just used a different phrase or set of words. Smoking cigarettes in my room or on the porch after my parents went to sleep was so wonderfully covert and illicit. I could have smoked inside, as my father smoked, but I didn't.
The thing is that a pack, 20 cigarettes, would last me a week or two. Each one was precious. I guess it helped that I didn't have a built up resistance to the tobacco/nicotine so I got a little buzz with every puff. In high school I didn't smoke the majority of the year (boarding school don't you know). It wasn't until college that my smoking was ratcheted up to complete addiction and way too much of a defining trait. Or, at least, that's how I see it. Smoking in college was, frankly, like breathing. I lived in a trailer with four other committed smokers and I think you would have been hard pressed to find a time where (if one or more of us were awake) there wasn't a cigarette hanging from someone's lips or glowing in an ashtray. I learned how to shape my ash as I smoked from one roommate. I was told by another that the worst time to quit would be when you were sick with bronchitis...because to quit smoking would be to introduce a world of phlegm previously unimagined (I'm thinking this is probably not really true). We all woke up, made coffee (I drank a lot more coffee then) and smoked. We would go to classes and smoke during break. We sat in the smoking section in the cafeteria (I can literally count the number of times I ate in the non-smoking dining room, over four years, on two hands).
The college years went by and I don't even want to say how much I smoked because my mother wouldn't like it (1 1/2 packs a day on average but sometimes more). It was a comfort. It was, still is actually, a way to some times disassociate from situations or people I didn't particularly care for or was frightened by. Going out for a smoke, even in non-smoking circles, still is generally considered permissible and understandable. But it was also a way to meet people. Asking for a lighter, having a cigarette break together, you find something to say to one another. Some times this leads to more things...other times it leads to finding a different spot for your next break.
I used cigarettes to curb hunger, boredom or sadness. I took a series of photographs about it. I wish I had the better one digital but I only have this one. What do others do when they don't know what to do? I'll have to figure it out. But here's the thing...I can't quite wrap my head around the idea that I'll never smoke again. I always pictured myself reverting to my teen-aged smoking self: having a cigarette late at night, once or twice a week, after the husband and kids were asleep...brushing my teeth three times and spritzing a little spritz on all my clothes (thankfully my sandalwood days are completely behind me).
I have always (well, not always but for a long time) said that I would quit either when I turned 30 or when I got pregnant, whichever happened first, but now I'm thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad to stop sooner than either of those things. I've never liked the idea that someone wouldn't like me because of the fact that I smoked. I've always thought it would be a character flaw on the other person's side of things. And I still think that...except that it's interesting to think about what I could, potentially, miss out on because of the prejudice. My mother would point out (has, actually, on multiple occasions) that kissing a smoker is like kissing an ashtray. I've never kissed an ashtray...though I have kissed other smokers. My mother would also mention that smokers get wrinkles and bad skin and yellow teeth. My teeth have already been tinted, not as bad as some I've seen but every once and a while I'll see a photograph of me smiling with teeth (a rarity in and of itself) and a non-smoker. My teeth never look as good as their's.
So I've decided to cut down. I'm going to start with 10 cigarettes a day. Then I'll go to 8. Then 5. Then 3. Then 1. That's the plan. In blogging about it there is a slightly better chance it will actually happen.
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