Kerri Quit Smoking One Year Ago

"I THANK GOD for my freedom every day of my life."

I wasn’t pregnant this time, I wasn’t sick, I enjoyed smoking and the alone time it provided to me. But I quit smoking. I had my last one exactly a year ago in fact.

I quit because I couldn’t do ANYTHING without incorporating it in!! I HAD to smoke. I had to have my husband lift me out of bed once with a 103-degree fever and strep throat because I needed a cigarette so badly. I avoided things that meant I couldn’t smoke, i.e. chaperoning field trips, going to the beach, all night scrapbook sessions. I sat out in the rain, sleet, snow and hail so I could smoke. I said to myself, “You know, this is no way to live.” I only smoked for 17 years, much less than a lot of the warriors on this forum, but I was an addict to the core. I blew a 19 month quit because I wanted to be a smoker, I didn’t want “just one” I wanted the whole pack. I don’t know what I thought I was missing. I don’t think I remembered the slavery that accompanied it.

I woke up on January 8, 2004 and said, “I’m going to give this a shot”. It wasn’t easy. Nothing in life worth fighting for is. I spent a lot of time filling the void and finding things that provided me the relief I was needing. I learned to knit, eating hand-to-mouth food like grapes, singing, dancing, posting and more posting, walking and later after some healing set in-jogging, reading magazines… I started re-reading my body signals. When my heart was pounding and I was feeling anxious, I said, “I better lay off the caffeine!” Instead of reaching for a smoke, automatically thinking the feeling was needing a cigarette. I realize now I used to confuse a lot of feelings with “needing” a cigarette.

I had to steer clear of my family for a bit…I needed to find the “place”. I didn’t know what that “place” was, but everyone who quit before me said there was one, so I kept at it! I wasn’t comfortable with just having life go on, I really had to change a lot, mainly my thinking. Slowly, but surely the fog lifted, the diversions I used were becoming just a way of life and not “things to keep me from smoking”. I began enjoying my children more because I was not limited in what I could do with them. The place! That’s what they mean…the life beyond cigarettes!

I am thankful I smoked because I don’t know if I would have ever realized the power that I have within myself. Quitting smoking is more than just not smoking, it’s changing how you think about your life and its quality and potential, about being an addict, understanding the addiction. Pulling out the real you under the fog and taking good care of that “you”. It doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a few months. It is a very tough process, but because I did it, I can do anything.

I THANK GOD for my freedom every day of my life. I can do so much; there is no more consideration before going off to do something I enjoy. There’s nothing stopping me.

I’ve known for a while what I was going to give myself for my one-year reward: a new title.Smoking is not now nor ever will be an option. I will not have a puff, not one ever, there’s no room in my life. Cigarettes are sickening, life sucking, burning, carcinogenic slave making, money wasting pieces of crap wrapped in paper like some sick present.

After this post, I am uninstalling my quit meter. My new title is:

NON-SMOKER