everyone loves a quitter, right?

Whenever i make new years resolutions, i never, ever keep them. but this year, there were a lot of thing i really wanted to change in my life, and i knew that if i made them "resolutions" i was not going to accomplish changing them... so instead, i made myself a personal mission statement. It was more general, with a few specific little things. but i think it's going to be a good reference for me whenever i hit a block in the road. two of the things i put specifically into that statement were to quit smoking, and blog more. I have such a poor, neglected little blog here. and another blog that i was supposed to write for monthly, but nope. some of the posts in this blog are even embarrassing to me when i read over them again. its like, i was just trying to hard to get something into here that i didnt even bother making it worth reading. so this year, i will blog more and it will be worth your time and mine, dear reader. as for quitting smoking. that's what i wanted to write about today. i've gone 53 and a half hours without having a cigarette. It was mostly by accident, i was travelling north from Montreal and i had only one stick left the morning i was supposed to leave. i smoked it. then we had a layover in La Grande where i managed to bum a cigarette from an old friend of my mom's.. then when we got to pov, i didnt really know anyone at the airport enough to be comfortable to bum one. I got to my boyfriends place (who doesnt smoke!) while he was still away for work so i spent the night alone. I was too cold to go out and buy/bum cigarettes and i was too tired and too lazy. so i stayed in and before i knew it, 24 hours had passed since my last cigarette. i was desperate for one by that point, but i was still too cold to go buy some and i started thinking, hmm.. i've never ever gone 24 hours without a cigarette since i started smoking, i should just continue. and now im here, 53 hours later and still havent had one. I'm thinking A LOT about it, but not because i want to smoke one. Thinking about the way it made me feel... it gave me headaches, it made me nauseous each and every time i smoked, and yet i smoked like 6-7 times a day. i have asthma, so i would be taking my inhalers far more than the recommended doses per day, not to mention the 4am barely getting a breath in asthma attacks that came like clock work. and dont even get me started on the nasty shit i was coughing up every day... *ugh* it's hard. it really isnt easy quitting smoking. I've had two cups of coffee, a HUGE bowl of broth and im on my third herbal tea of the day. I'm eating almonds left and right and i keep bringing my two fingers to my lips as if there's a cigarette to puff... my body is itching for it, but my mind seems to be over the matter and that makes me proud. it's not necessarily the cigarette itself that i want either. it's the ritual. pulling a cigarette out of the pack, tapping the filter on my lighter or a table to compact it, sometimes i'd break the tip off, sometimes i didnt.. light and smoke, gag, smoke, gag, smoke, flick. cue nausea, cue headache, cue the "who cares, cause im so cool cause i smoke" feeling to justify it all. when something becomes so part of your day to day life, it gets harder and harder to let it go... wake up in the morning, make coffee, check my emails and have a cigarette. it seems so natural.. but i didnt smoke for years, and i wasnt a smoker for very long. in fact, i was that friend who would break your cigarettes or make coughing and gagging noises each time someone lit one up.. i couldnt face my parents, even though i knew that they knew; i still lied about it or changed the subject (rather harshly) if it ever came up. I never want to be like that. im going to be good to myself, and to others. being good to others means not blowing toxic fumes in their face, not being a bitch because i havent had a cigarette and not trowing toxic butts on the ground for someone else to clean up. my aunt told me something a few months ago that stuck with me, each time i smoked i would think of her. she smoked all her life, and now in her old(er) age, she's quit. she said "When you're older, and you've been smoking your whole life, you're going to wake up every day and realize how precious life is. you're going to be scared of dying every day because you're going to know you're going to die sooner than you were meant to because of cigarettes." she didnt say it spitefully or rudely like most people who tell you to quit smoking do, she said it honestly and genuinely, she said it out of love for me. it took me a few months to get it, but those words, i never forgot them and i never will....