Windchimes

Leaving the title blank for now

I could call it "transition." I could say it feels like "suspended animation." I would say I'm waiting to see how this smoking cessation thing turns out, but I've pretty much decided that I doggone gotta make it work, if it means holing up like a hermit until the urges stop.

They say your sense of taste gets keener when you stop smoking. I haven't experienced that yet. Something, some aspect of the different flavors that, compounded, make up how a food tastes...one or more of those in almost every food I've eaten since that last cigarette, somehow reminds me of how smoking tastes.

Of course, I can't hole up like a hermit until the urges stop. I have to decide how to deal with them. Advice from this corner says "keep yourself busy, take a walk, do something to get your mind off that craving." Advice from that corner says "don't fight the craving, let yourself experience it, and you'll see that its nothing so strong that you must cave to it." I think a little self-hypnosis might help me believe the latter.

I suppose writing about all this is my way of letting myself experience these feelings, of trying to examine them closely.

Spent last evening at home, after making one trip (accompagnied by my daughter) to the grocery store, and I believe the cravings come more often in the evening. But I'm going out this evening, so I'll find out what kind of difference that makes. There will be smokers at the place I'm going tonight, one of whom bummed a cigarette from me last time I saw her, and said she'd pay me back. I will have to stay in the house from the moment I arrive till the moment we're ready to head straight for the car. One little acronym from the quit smoking website has been steeling my nerves. From now on the word "nope" stands, for me, for "not one puff ever."

Such a wierd feeling in the back of my mouth, and inside my neck. Is this what more oxygen feels like? Or is it the tar and all the nasty stuff except nicotine (since I'm still wearing a patch) working its way up and out of my lungs? I can picture microscopic black flecks released from the lungs' linings, pushing their way up my windpipe.

I don't want to turn into one of those annoying ex-smokers, or "rabid nonsmokers," as Holly Jahangiri calls them. All these paragraphs are mere observations, personal observations, made as a part of my effort...no, not effort...its more like a travel log, made by ......oh what a corny, stale metaphor. The point is, this "quit" has to be something besides just an "effort." It has to be, this time, for me, "the quit." I don't know what's different this time, but I do know, somehow, that this time is different.

I promise to write about something else as soon as I can concentrate for any amount of time on any other subject.

I've still got about a third of Moby Dick left to read, a sinkful of dirty dishes to tend to, and my legs need shaving, so off I go...


J.H. Larrew
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