Six Days to Non-Smoker

By Thanksgiving Day, I will be a non-smoker even if it drives me up the wall to want a cigarette with that glass of chardonnay. I will certainly have to skip the traditional Wild Turkey shot with my friends. The thought of quitting smoking definitely sends me into a spiral of anxiety. How will life be without a cigarette? How will it be to be a non-smoker? I will soon find out.

Sounds a little cocky for someone who has smoked most of her life, and thinks she can quit after nearly four decades habit in six days.

I started when I was eleven years old. Back then, it was cool to smoke, or so I thought it made me look cool and grown-up. I used to buy a cigarette for a nickel at the corner grocery on the way to school every morning, and on the way home after school, I would buy another one. It was not until I was in high school that I began smoking five or more cigarettes a day. In my twenties, I was up to a pack a day. In my thirties, I was smoking up at least a pack and a half. Now, in my forties, I am up two packs a day – depending on the kind of day I am having. Five years ago, I started working at home, and this is when I noticed the increase in the number of cigarettes per day. A few nights ago, while grading students’ essays, I noticed I had smoked two packs and had opened a third pack. How was I still breathing?


Why now? Smoking is finally taking a toll on my health in ways I can no longer ignore; the pain of continuing to smoke is far outweighing the pain of quitting. Smoking killed my parents, and it will kill me, too. I am now the age they were when they began to really suffer the physical consequences of decades of heavy smoking, and both only lived another ten years. Dad passed away before his fifty-ninth birthday. Mom passed away shortly after her sixtieth. They both smoked up to the day they died. If the same may happen to me, then I only have twelve or thirteen years left. For me, that is just not long enough. I do not want to miss out on anything, and if I continue to smoke, I will miss out on a lot!

For myself, for my husband, for my child, and for my future grandchildren, I want to be alive for a long, long time.

Tune in.