This helped me quit … I read a story online at a website somewhere about a little girl who spent her summer helping her Mom cope with life. Her Mom was battling cancer because she was a smoker. Her Mom was not able to do everything like she used to. Her Mom needed her.
So, this little girl stopped living her own life and stopped enjoying all the wonderful fun things that children do in the summertime, like swimming and playing with friends, so that she would be a caregiver to her Mom.
I read that story and I thought about my children and myself. I thought about the choice I made every single time I let the addiction bring the cigarette to my lips. I thought about how I never really tried very hard to stop. I thought about how much real work I had put into this, not much. And I decided to try a little harder because I didn’t want to live that story and I didn’t want to be that Mom and I didn’t want to place that kind of sad responsibility on my little girls.
So, I started to care about them and then I started to care about me. And somehow I found the strength to resist that habit when in the past, I never really tried all that hard to battle it. Somehow I found the strength to outlast the miserable craving that was screaming in my head and through my bloodstream. I found the strength to hold out longer and rise above it. And every single time I did that, when it was a hundred times a day, when it was 50 times a day, when it was 25 times a day, I was a little more proud of the person I had become that day.
The next day I had somebody stronger to depend on, me. I had somebody with experience to depend on, me. I had somebody with battle scars and knowhow to depend on, me. I had a friend that was dependable and strong and good to know, me.
And one day it all seemed so far in the past. And one day it all seemed so simple. But I remember still what it was like. It was hell, sure it was. It was hell week, hell month. But it’s really a good thing to know that you can walk to hell and back and survive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
