Hi kids! Its so good to be home after a very long not-vacation. I say not-vacation because when is twelve days and two family wedding weekends ever a relaxing, stress-free, post-daiquiri, snooze on the beach in a hammock kind of a deal? Never. For the most part I had a great time but there were more than a few late nights out after consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Add that with the usual family stressors like an estranged dad, a nephew entering the terrible twos, a stressed out sister, and a grandma succumbing to alzheimer's and man, did I want a smoke.
I am nearly eleven months smoke-free but the last month has been trigger after trigger for me. I worried about diarying this because I didn't want to be discouraging to anyone about to quit. However, I heard other people who were reaching that year mark grumbling about cravings as well, so I thought I would vent a bit. Call it the ten to twelve month itch. Add family to the mix and you have one very irritable girl on your hands.
I know my self and my addictive behavior well enough by now to know that I started smoking because I was lonely and in desperate need of some stability. I was eleven and my parents had divorced five years earlier but things showed no signs of settling down. Both of my parents were off making new lives for themselves and I guess I felt more than a little lost in the shuffle. I had a really long bus commute from my middle school with a forty-five minute stop over that was really far from home so one day I stole a pack of cigs from my dad thinking this would be great way to pass the time. I still remember sitting at my bus stop listening to "We Built this City on Rock and Roll" (horrible, wretched song that should never be spoken of again) on my walkman and having my first puff. I remember some older teenager watching me try to suck down that first cig and trying to remain cool. I puffed through UB40's "Red, Red Wine" and Fine Young Cannibals' "She drives Me Crazy" and by then I had fallen in love with smoking.
Fast forward a million years later and eleven months quit after a nearly twenty year habit to me at a diner at four a.m. in Ann Arbor with a few of my cousins puffing away right next to me. Grumpy pants, indeed. I adore my cousins and we have a great time together; I am one of those tremendously lucky people with an extended family that gets along famously. We grew up together and we know way too much about one another at this point to ever want to go and piss each other off. It is my immediate family that is so trying. Nothing makes me want to smoke more than being around my dad. So I did something different this time. When I knew I reached my limit on people and drinking and family or whatever, I just went and sat outside for like ten minutes. Be forewarned-when you go sit outside by yourself without a cig, people will think you are distressed. Try and take some amusement in this situation. I had a few of them ask me if I was okay and I reassured them that I was in fact, fine and just needed a breather.
These quiet moments saved me, I think. I got to do what I used smoking as an excuse to do, without the death siren cig. I cannot stress enough to those out there trying to quit that there are ways to take a moment for yourself without smoking. Way healthier ways. And these cravings, even a year after quitting, are so much better than the way being a smoker feels. Being able to breathe, to run, to dance my ass off at wedding receptions and drink too much and wake up the next day not feeling like my heart is about to give out. Way worth it. Breathing is a solidly good thing. As much as I may want one in the moment, if I take the smallest step back I know that having one means being a smoker again and that is so not an option.
And now one of my favorite family movie clips, from The Royal Tenenbaums:
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