Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who only smoke when they have a drink, or when they hang out with their bad influence friend. There was a girl I knew in high school, I'm pretty sure to this very day her mother never knew she smoked, but she puffed a pack or more every weekend for years. Sadly, I'm just not that kind of girl. My DNA dictated I was destined to be the bad influence friend.
It's OK, bad influence DNA also comes with gravity defying titties.
Depending on your calculations, it took me 18 months or 30 years to quit. If I am being honest, the attempts before January of 2018 shouldn't be counted. I started smoking in 8th grade, in the beginning it was only on rare occasions. By 9th grade my Texas boyfriend was making fun of me for wasting the cigarettes I smoked because I didn't inhale. On the timeline that brought me here another boy taught me how to inhale during an extended visit back home. He is certain that he didn't. I am more inclined to believe in shifting timelines than to imagine either of us might be mistaken.
I can't claim I didn't know smoking was bad for you when I started. Boomers can sincerely claim they didn't, but every pack I've ever bought came with a surgeon general's warning. Yul Brynner's, my first bald crush, postmortem PSA aired the same year I sparked up the first time. I absolutely knew, even at 12 and 13, that smoking smells disgusting, that it was a waste of money, and that it caused lung cancer. At 12 and 13 all of my friends smoked, so we all smelled gross together. At 12 and 13 I didn't have many bills, but I had a job. Besides, I assumed I'd be really wealthy when I was an adult. And at 12 and 13 I knew there would be a cure for lung cancer long before it was a concern for me.
Every 12-year-old is naive, but I may have been especially so.
At the drive-in when Sandy said, Tell me about it stud, 6-year-old me knew, first chance I got, that was the who I was going to be.
Took it, and I was.
I am.
Motivation is a weird concept for me. I don't tend to have a lot of it, but I don't seem to need a lot of it either. Things just work out for me. On the rare occasion I find something challenging, I just turn my attention to something that isn't. Fuck it, the world is full of so many cool things, why waste time on the difficult ones? A dozen times I had reasons to quit, and I tried. I went an hour, sometimes several hours, a couple times I went most of a day not having a cigarette. Then I got uncomfortable, annoyed, cranky and said why am I doing this to myself? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and I'll have wasted these hours being uncomfortable that I could have been enjoying myself and a smoke. And that was that, I had tried.
Then Fate was like, hey remember that one boy? How would you like a chance to impress him now?
Oh, remember how cool he was in 1991? You won't believe this, that wasn't his peak.
Whatcha got? What exactly are you doing that might wow him?
It really is so embarrassing, but that's where I found my motivation. I wanted to impress a boy I felt like I had failed to impress when I was a teenager.
I invite you to peruse my follows, it is not often that I fail to make an impression.
Does it matter what sparked it, tobacco is a sacred offering.
It took 18 months, January of 2018 through August of 2019. In the rearview I see it all as one attempt, the one and only successful attempt. It took months to master day 2, and I'd take a few days off from trying after I caved. It seems like it jumped. Once I could get through 2 days, a week became my breaking point. I'd be so proud of myself for making it so far that I'd feel justified having a little secret treat. I'd rationalize that maybe I can be one of those girls who just smokes occasionally. Nope, definitely not and there I'd be back at the beginning. Each time I'd remind myself with consent berating, if you hadn't fucked up, you'd be past this part forever. You choose this discomfort. You know nowl exactly how frustrating it is. You knew that you are going to feel like you are going insane and here we are having to go through it again. But I did, over and over again until I pushed through that too.
I made it through my mother's services without slipping, that seems proof enough that I'll be an ex-smoker forever now. But still sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who could just indulge occasionally.