Why I Quit Smoking

As Wendell Berry writes, “Tobacco is fragrant, and smoking at its best is convivial or ceremonious and pleasant.”

Wednesday will mark one month since I quit smoking. Yay me, right?

A little more than a month ago, TEA told me (yes, told me) that I should quit smoking and I told him that I would try. Well, I did try, that day, and I backslid. I like to smoke. I really like to smoke. (Seriously, look at what I wrote three years ago on the subject.) The people I enjoy hanging out with smoke, tolerate smoking, or smoke on the side. Most of the people I have dated as an adult have been those who either actively smoked or smoked on the side, stealing a drag or a cigarette when they could, but making sure that others did not know about their habitual smoking. I love sitting outside on a hot day with a cold drink, a good book, and a cigarette. Well, I guess…I loved doing something like that as it is not longer going to be an option.

Yes, I have always known that smoking is bad for me, and that it makes my clothes smell like death and that the negative aspects socially outweigh the positive but there is something about a cigarette that makes it the substitute for doing something, anything, else. (One of the things that I have been doing to fill that void in my life is running more consistently than I have in years I mean, I have gone running 6 days a week for the last three, which is something that I have not done since high school, twenty years ago.) And I miss it. I cannot go for a run when I crave a cigarette while watching Mad Man (I have talked to other former smokers about this, and they all say that the program is a trigger for them as well.)

But I have quit, and yes, I have quit before, but this time, I do think that it will stick. I quit because of the best reason in the world.

I quit smoking because it was important to the most important person in the world and I will do anything for him.