fountainhead

cross my mind - smoking - part 2

part 2

when there was talk of a bill being passed in government prohibiting smoking in public, i wondered what i was going to do, but knowing the red tape and inefficiency of such cabinet decisions, i thought i would cross that bridge when it got to me. but my eyes and ears were open. many of my friends are not smokers; i always felt when i visit them, i will not smoke in their homes and when they visit me they can go outside if i smoke, if they feel like it. i was not going to lurk around my own home to smoke. one of my friends complained occasionally of inhaling secondhand smoke. i told her to go somewhere else while i was smoking.

(i can hardly believe that i have such a lot to say about all this.) i remember a very distressing incident. a few years ago a number of us (all smokers) were driving to a town a few hundred kilometers from where i live, for the weekend. on our way out of town we stopped at a dvd shop to hire some dvds for the weekend. i waited in the car but after a while was called to help choose dvds. i left my cigarette in the door ashtray and when i came back the cigarette had burnt the genuine leather, linen white arm rest of this nearly vintage type car. i could have died there and then. how on earth could i ever fix this?! i couldn’t! i remember billy being the kindest person on earth about this, but i felt like the worst criminal. more so because i would never under normal circumstances have left a lit cigarette anywhere! what on earth was i thinking? bottom line and very unlike me, i wasn’t thinking…i had one of the worst weekends of my life, apologizing to billy until everyone was quite sick of me.

now i was back at work after my 13h30 cigarette. i asked erika, the cleaner if she would please wash my ashtray (i liked tall ashtrays because being a fan and fresh air lover, i always had wind around me and high ashtray sides kept the ash from blowing out of the ashtray). i also used one of those hollow miniature things in which one puts one’s cigarette so one doesn’t have to grind it in an ashtray to put it out - they are out in seconds (in southern africa these circular things are jokingly called winnie mandelas, although the irony may be lost on those unfamiliar with her political history). i had four cigarettes left and i put these, together with the ashtray, the winnie mandela and my favourite zippo of that week in the cupboard behind my back in my office and locked it.

i found myself reaching automatically for a cigarette in my desk drawer time and time again that afternoon, after all, i am a chain smoker, i think. (not i think. i am a chain smoker.) when this happened i checked myself and thought okay, okay, okay…it’s okay…it doesn’t matter that i do this. it’s okay. i kept on working. i saw to it that i did not dwell on thoughts of smoking. or not smoking. and i kept on reaching for a cigarette which i never took, no matter how many million times i reached for it. and it was fine to not have one, i realised to my utter surprise and disbelief. funny how this was; every time i reached for one and thought to myself, don’t worry, of course you’ll reach for cigarettes for a while yet, but get over it and do the next thing, it was like i was taking a step in the right direction; i just had to let it go and remind myself that i was not losing anything. looking back, i recognize now that i was letting go, every time i automatically reached for that cigarette and one has to make an allowance for letting go. i know that now.  i kept waiting for something to happen. i didn’t know what to expect. i’d never read a book or an article or anything about stopping smoking. i think i was expecting severe withdrawal symptoms or headaches (what exactly, i wasn’t sure), after all, i’d been smoking lots for a very long time.

came 17h00 i went home; now was the real test. i had four packets of twenty at home, besides the four cigarettes i’d locked away in my office cupboard. i did not tell a single soul that i’d ‘stopped’. monday night went so well, i could not believe it. tuesday at work; i was a bit fidgety, but i came prepared. i had toothpicks, i had raw carrots which i’d peeled and sliced into sticks. and i had dried prunes. i found that if i had something in my mouth, even if it was the pip of the prune, i went without thinking of a cigarette for a much longer period. and i was determined to not gain weight as many people said one does. the stopping smoking is not what makes one gain weight, of course. it’s stuffing one’s face to refrain from lighting a cigarette or substituting a cigarette for a snack that is calorie dense. my hands still reached for my desk drawer, but i just took them back to what they were doing before reaching for a cigarette. every time. over and over.

continued in part 3