I quit smoking 7 weeks ago today.
7 weeks, 8 hours, 19 minutes and 37 seconds actually. 38. 39. 40. (I have a little website that keeps track for me.) I've learned a lot over those 7 weeks -- a lot about myself, a lot about the people around me, a lot about quitting, and a lot about the kinds of stories that we are, and are not, allowed to tell about quitting. I believe in stories. I believe that telling stories is the way that we make sense of our place in the world, and the way that we understand the things that we feel, see, touch, need, and love. I make sense of the world through words, both my own and those of others.
So it makes perfect sense that I sought out words as I quit. I wanted to know everything. How would it feel? What would happen in my body? What did other people think and feel when they did this? Day-by-day, minute-by-minute, I wanted the story of what was happening to me. I wanted to know. Everything.
The disappointment was almost immediate. I couldn't find anyone who actually told the truth. Maybe they forgot because they were looking back too far in time; maybe they knew that the truth wouldn't inspire people to try to quit; maybe they just needed their story to fit with the stories they encountered all around them. For whatever reason, the stories that surrounded me, that continue to surround me, simply do not resemble my reality. Thus, this blog.
Collected here my stories of quitting. They tell the truth about what it's been like for me, regardless of what former smokers, the nicotine industry, or even my mother might think. They tell the kind of truth I was looking for 7 weeks ago.
Well, 7 weeks, 8 hours, 32 minutes, and 11 seconds now.
