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So I have officially been a non-smoker for over 8 months. This might not seem like a big deal to lots of you who have been non-smokers for your entire life, but you better believe for me, this is HUGE! See when I say non-smoker I mean a true NON-smoker. I haven’t smoked socially because “it doesn’t count when you’re drinking” (if that was the truth I would be smoking all the time!) I haven’t even had one drag off a friends cig because “it doesn’t count if it’s not your cigarette.”

This is how it would usually go when I would “quit” smoking:

We’re at a party and I kept taking drags off everyone else’s cigarettes, but  since I am not holding a cigarette of my own, it doesn’t count.

Okay, I am now holding a cigarette of my own but I didn’t buy it, I bummed it off someone else, so it totally doesn’t count.

I bought a pack, but it’s just for tonight and I’m sharing them with everyone else (meaning all the other quitters who don’t want it to count) so it doesn’t count.

I bought a pack for me personally, but I’m sticking it in the freezer and I’m only going to have one once in a while, so it doesn’t count.

Yep, I’m smoking every day, but I’m not a smoker. I don’t even own an ashtray. soooo…it doesn’t count.

I’m just smoking to get through this rough patch. I am totally going to quit again as soon as my life is perfect.

That is how I usually quit. This time I quit for good. To do that, I had to come to terms with the fact that I will never have another cigarette EVER. That was not an easy thing to do because I was one of those smokers who really ENJOYED smoking. I mean I LOVED it! I still think about smoking. every. single. day. Usually many times. But there is some progress being made. Yesterday I walked past someone smoking and it smelled horrible to me. For a long time after I quit I would walk by smokers and inhale deeply like a dieter walking by a barbecue. But yesterday, it smelled a bit icky to me.

Never fear I am not going to turn into one of those ex-smokers who preaches to all the current smokers about how bad it is for you and it’s such a nasty habit and blah, blah, blah. Those people are the worst. There is no one smoking who is not completely aware of how bad it is, sometimes we just don’t care. That’s the truth of it and if all those commercials with a woman talking through a hole in her throat and surgeon general’s warnings don’t work, what the hell makes you think wrinkling your nose and being a judgey bitch is going to work? It’s not. And I will never tell anyone to quit smoking. Except my kids. If I ever catch them smoking I will tell them to quit and then I will gently put out their cigarette with a fire hose. But if you are a grown ass adult and you choose to smoke you will not find me judging you.

I will say this to all the people who say they have tried to quit but they can’t. Don’t stop trying. Seriously, one of these days it will work. If I can quit, anyone can. You think you don’t have enough will-power to quit? Let me tell you something, when they were handing out will-power, I was in the other room smoking, drinking, and eating cheesecake so you know how much will-power I ended up with? NONE! As in zero, zilch, nada…

You want to know how I did it? It wasn’t will-power. It was honesty. I stopped lying to myself and telling myself that THIS cigarette didn’t count or didn’t matter. I stopped telling myself the lies about I will quit tomorrow, next week, after New Year’s. And actually, I quit the day BEFORE Thanksgiving. Yeah, the day before I spend an entire day with family and relatives I let go of one of my vices. Yes I am a bit stupid. But I caught myself telling one of those lies. “I will quit after Thanksgiving.” Then I remembered there was Christmas and then New Years and not long after that, birthdays and spring break…

All of a sudden it hit me that  there will ALWAYS going be a reason NOT to quit and I either needed to quit smoking or quit lying to myself about it. So I quit. Cold turkey. And it was hard. Everyone says the first 3 days or the first week is the hardest. I think it is the first year. But you make it through the first day and then you make it through the first week and then the first month and it is HARD. Some days the only reason I don’t pick up a cigarette is because I DO NOT want to do that first day or week or month over again.

So here I am 6 months later. And I still want a cigarette. And I’m still choosing to not have one. And when I think I can’t do something I tell myself “Girl, you quit smoking, you can do anything” and I think that’s the truth.

I’m glad I didn’t know about these awesome smoking mittens. Giving up smoking with special mittens would’ve been really hard.