I smoke about twenty five per day and have done mostly for about 30 years. I keep trying to stop, trying being the pertinent word. Once I stopped for 18 months then I started again when I found out I had colitis – as I though stupidly it would help the colitis go away. Yip I came out of the hospital that day and went and bought cigarettes. They were horrible, I had to chew gum every time I had a cigarette as the taste was so awful – but hell I stuck at it and after three months I could smoke without gum or something to drink at the same time.
I found out that it did not noticeable help the colitis so I tried to stop again and failed many times. Then I just gave up trying to stop – there is nothing that can make me feel so bad about myself than continually failing at something I am trying to achieve – I stopped doing that to myself – that was my thinking at that time.
I have laboured along under the illusion that smoking really does nothing to my health. No one in my family has ever died of cancer, I have counted on genes to help me survive – quite happily everyday throwing that dice.
However it does have other affects on my health. My teeth and gums suffer, my dentist tells me every time I see him that I will lose all my teeth prematurely if I don’t stop smoking. I listen and think about it for two or three days and then manage to put it out of my head once again. So instead of stopping smoking I have devised a solution to losing my teeth and found out the cost of full implants. It seems that I would rather have an operation in my mouth than stop smoking – several operations in fact. Hmm, kind of crazy thinking.
I get scared of stopping smoking. For one and the biggest fear is how angry I get. In my day to day life I rarely get very angry, the usual stuff with partners and other car drivers, but it is not a problem in my life – that is until I stop smoking, and then I feel like I turn into an angry monster. Normally I hate waiting in queues and will often go without something if the queues are too long, the effect is quite different when off the cigarettes – I want to push everyone out of the way, yell and get the manager – ask when customer service is not a priority for them – but of course I do none of these things I take my anger away with me and walk around with it in my head.
Fear has controlled so much of my life, to see the best stuff ever written on fear read this post – and I often think now if there is any way I am acting simply because of fear that I don’t see. Well stopping smoking falls into that category. I am terrified. I don’t want to feel that anger, but there are other things also.
I don’t want to set out on a path that leads me to fail again and again. Would I rather just give up? Perhaps, in some ways it is easier to ignore that than have constant failure in ones face.
Then there are the other situations where cigarettes are used. In social situation I often use them to get away from people or conversations. Sometimes if things are going somewhere in conversations that I don’t want to be a party to I just get up and leave saying I am off for a cigarette, the easy way out perhaps. Then with some people and conversations they just bore me, cigarettes are another escape, and just don’t come back to that person or conversation. Then the last one – I really don’t trust people and take quite a while to let them get to know me a bit, this process can sometimes take years – as my partner can attest to. So if conversations are getting too intimate well it is time for a cigarette once bloody again. The last is not used often but it has been good to have the option of leaving any time I want.