One Year Ago Today
Today is the one-year anniversary of my last cigarette. A full year later I am still a non-smoker. This was something I never thought I would become. I smoked through half the 80’s, all of the 90’s and almost all of the 00’s, all those years I thought that my addiction was far stronger than my willpower to destroy it, and that I was forever doomed to the life of a smoker.
Doomed to the life of dirty clothes that always smell. White shirts I had to keep in a closet in a non-smoking part of the house. Doomed to walls and ceilings covered in that oily yellow dust, the same dust that covers lampshades and curtains and my computer and all my books. A life where I don’t know for sure if I’ll have an old age, a life where my athletic endeavors are limited, as are the levels of whiteness I can expect in my teeth. A life where I am rigidly timed… how many hours between one cigarette and the next? If I do this thing or that, go to this movie or get on this flight, go shopping in this mall or visit these friends, I have to time everything just right so I can minimize the impact of withdrawals that I will be experiencing 2 hours after my last cigarette.
Doomed to be a smoker in a non-smoking world. A world where I am viewed with the eyes of the average stranger who sees smoking as a habit which designates me as part of the lower-classes and the criminal element. A non-smoking world where the smoking areas are disappearing before my eyes… not only in public and private property and mass transit, but in my town there are even public pedestrian streets where smoking is illegal. There are apartments and condos I can’t live in as a smoker, there are insurance programs that won’t accept me, and there are employers who can legally discriminate against me as a smoker and fire me or refuse to hire me based solely on this. This same non-smoking world that will tax the smoker more heavily than any other person, reaping millions of dollars a year from these people whose addiction forces them to pay the taxes, and no one can cry foul… because smokers aren’t people who matter anymore in this world we live in.
I still want the cigarettes every now and again, but that passes. The smoking “lifestyle,” however, is not something I miss. I’ve found other things to do while I wait for a file to download, I’ve found other ways to enjoy a ten-minute work break, and I’ve found other ways to unwind after dinner.
I managed to find a way to break free from my chemical slavery, and today is my new life’s birthday.
Originally published at BlueSmoke Studio. You can comment here or there.