So I am sitting here taking a stab at re-arranging my too-small office/gym into a functional configuration, watching the sun filter through the blinds too long covered by a bookcase, sipping on my morning coffee and greens. I've vowed silence for myself until the little one wakes, simply because it is delicious.
I take a deep breath. Repeat. I'm used to rising and jumping into my day with both feet. I long for a quiet, relaxed morning routine, but never take the time to provide it to myself before I let the day take me along in its current. On breath three, I'm hit with remembrance and with a profound gratitude for that breath because it occurs to me that it has been three years since I started loving someone else enough to love myself. Three years since I stopped doing the only thing I've ever truly regretted.
I found a manifesto of sorts in my desk drawer this morning dated 5/12/2012 1:30am, one of my last cigarette quit attempts. Never in my life have I had to attempt something so many times to find success, much less at stopping something.
Many of my current friends never knew me as a smoker, and for that clean, fresh-scented start I am also grateful. Some friends knew me as a closet smoker, only discovering my secret after one too many beverages wore down my willpower. But most others, my family included, knew me with a something-Light between my lips or my fingers.
I remember the bewildered looks I received at school as a teenager in 1994, the new stink of cigarettes attached to my clothes headed back inside for vocal rehearsal or play practice. I had no idea how hard it would be to walk away from that habit, and no idea how naive I was for starting in the first place. I was missing people. Some had moved on, some had tried to, and I was hurting. I had walked away from activities I loved, because I was in pain, and the scorn I was subject to only drove me further into my hurting and depression.
It was then that I discovered this little friend. This little thing that I could tuck into my pocket, carry with me always, that would be there for me when any of those uncomfortable feelings began to surface. Because telling someone about my misery just felt impossible then, even when I was forced out of class by a well-meaning chemistry teacher to talk to the school psychologist. It feels unreal to even attempt writing all this now after so much time has passed, but that is sort of the point.
The process of starting and stopping smoking took me nearly twenty years! So many times I'd say, "This is the last time. This is the last one." So many times an argument, a disappointment, a break-up would come and off to the store I'd go, mentally beating myself the entire way.
I did not now how to manage my life as a teen, and then as an adult, without cigarettes. This problem was compounded when alcohol became part of my life as a young adult. It also took me a long time to determine the proper place of alcohol in my life, but that is for another day. Alcohol turned me into a chain-smoking machine on automatic pilot.
So back to clean air and gratitude. The knowledge of a child in my body was the catalyst for reclaiming my body and the process of learning to love myself. Many times during my pregnancy I lamented the damage already done to my body, the lack of love I'd shown myself so many times, and I vowed to do better. Faced with learning to be an adult and work through all my adult problems without aid of smoke or drink was daunting, and then not.
Do I have a healthy fear of the pull of such a strong habit? I surely do. Unlike a college professor who used to stand outside the building and intentionally bask in the cloud of students smoking, 30 years after his last cigarette, I can't stand to be around smoke now. The smell is revolting to me now. I wake incredibly disturbed when I have a rare dream where I am smoking, as some part of my brain is still identifying me as a smoker. That scares me just a little bit, but I wake up and look at my daughter and remember the powerful force of love that compelled me to stop and that love vanquishes fear.
Smoking was only one of the ways in which my insecurities and pains manifested themselves in my body, and I am working to move more, fuel better, and treat myself with kindness and patience in a way that I did not understand how to do in my younger years. We want our little to grow up with a strong sense of herself, with a confidence that I know I lacked, and with a resilience that might protect her from making some of the poor choices I made. No amount of nagging could have made or will make me change my ways. My motivation has to come from a positive place or I will fly in the face of whomever it is that is trying to take a negative tack with me. I'm wired that way it seems. Little is my positive. She is my motivation when I feel like I've run my tank of self-love a little too low.
So breathing in, I am grateful, full of love, and fear has no place here. This is how I will begin my days now, even on the rushed busy kind when there isn't an hour of quiet to begin. My hope is that this practice will help keep my tank just a little bit fuller.
Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts or would like to share your own experience, I invite you to do so.
