Hello Fellow Gussacks! I hope your week has started off well. This morning before work I walked around downtown taking pictures, before the crowds came. Due to the hour (7:30 am) and the direction of the sun, most the pictures turned out to be of facades, which got me to thinkin'...
Smoking is a facade. Depending on the surrounding culture, it can be a cool one, a sophisticated one or a sad and nasty one, but it is a facade nonetheless. Cigarettes are what people see (and smell!) when someone is smoking. The internal damage isn't so obvious.
For a long time I lived in cultures where not smoking was very very strange, like Spain, but I hear even they have toned it way down. (These photos are from Mexico City, of course, but many of these buildings were built by Spaniards.)
My giving up isn't yet perfect. They sell them singly here and I haven't been able to never buy one...Yet! But I'm starting to be able to see the sky.
What is much harder to really integrate is the facade with my actual self, my appearance with my internal health, my awareness with my denial and postponement of discomfort. This early 20th century facade reminds me of myself as a smoker, a little worn but nonetheless, stylish face to the world while behind the facade the actual abode needs lots of tender loving care.
My ruses are elaborate. Depression, stress, fear, boredom, anxiety, apathy...the depression is the hardest to deal with. The facade of a smoker protected me in the past, but no longer serves that purpose.
Walking about six miles a week has definitely helped. Also, keeping interesting books around to pick up when a craving hits. Stretching and drinking water. Taking lots and lots of breaks. Breathing. Reading Joel's Relapse Prevention Blog. While it is hard to believe sometimes, maybe I am right at the portal of a whole new way of being.
Any of you quitters out there had the sensation laying down a facade, crossing a portal or some such other kind of metaphysical metaphor when you were in the throws of letting go?