Not Smoking, Now

Twenty years ago today I made quite possibly the dumbest single decision of my life. I accepted a cigarette on the ride home from school. I'd been an offbeat, gawky, nerdy teenager and in the second half of my high school career I was willing to do anything to change that image. It seemed at the time that smoking, along with drinking, along with whatever else, might prove that somewhere inside me was a kid who had potential to be cool. This is all my fancy way of admitting that I caved, with little resistance, to peer pressure.

I remember that first cigarette, a Marlboro red in Mike McCollum's car. I remember the taste.

I don't know why I gave myself over to it so quickly, so willingly, but within a month I was a serious smoker, maybe not addicted yet but perversely anxious to get there. Less than a year later, I was smoking a pack a day, inching towards two.

I let it define me. I thought it defined me.

I never really tried to quit, for twenty years. I never went a day without at least one cigarette, and most days I had dozens more than just one. I always said that the day would come, one day, when I'd be ready to quit, but I don't think I ever really believed it. It's hard to imagine stopping an activity when you're doing it every fifteen minutes, every day, for decades. I thought it defined me, and I didn't know who I'd be without it, and I was scared to find out. Maybe I knew the day would come but I couldn't guess when.

December 11th, 2009, I went out for a smoke, unremarkable as I paced around outside Richard's building and listened to "One" by U2 on headphones, unremarkable except when I flicked it away I knew it would be my last. All that time and I was right: when the moment came, I recognized it, and when that moment came, quitting was as easy as starting had been. I had imagined I'd be cranky, crazy, sweating, sick to my stomach, who knows what else, but I wasn't. I was still me, just not smoking. And twenty-five days later, I still am, still just me, not smoking.

It didn't define me.