“You are my last” I say dramatically to the cigarette in my hand.
After countless attempts to quit smoking over the years, I allow myself this dramatisism, thinking it will make the difference this time.
What might also work in my favour, I think as I stub out what I then believe to be my final smoke, is that a close colleague is kicking the disgusting habit at the same time.
So I won’t be tempted to join when she goes on her smoke break, we can swop stories of missing our puffs. We will get through this.
That was Sunday night.
Come Monday morning at 11 am and all I want is to stand against the wall outside our building (10 meters from the entrance, of course) and wrap my lips around a stinky cancer-causing cigarette and inhale.
My phone seems to be ringing too loudly. My amazing colleagues are annoying me with their usually lovely banter and I fear the chances of me ending the day in an insane asylum is more likely than being able to finish the story on my screen for this week’s YOU deadline.
After all, smoking is what I do between takes. I come back “refreshed” and tackle my story like a maniac, comforted by the fact that I will have another fix in about two hours.
I Google “effects of smoking” thinking pictures of rotten lungs and coughing oldies will set me back on track and enable me to do what I need to – work.
Yet I’m rather apathetic about the shocking information I find – it’ll only happen to other people and only at like, 80. Now is what matters. And right now, I want a smoke.
My colleague is suffering too, although she has a steely determination not to be controlled by her former habit and it seems to be working for her, although I’m hearing more irritated mutterings and draw slamming from that corner of the office.
It’s now close to noon and I’ve already had the equivalent of breakfast, lunch and supper and am nowhere near satisfied.
I can’t do this. Why can’t I just have one more cigarette? Why can’t I rather stop smoking when we try for a baby? Why is my Aunt Didi, a smoker, alive and well in her late seventies? I’m familiar with these thoughts – I’d stopped for a few months once and know their seductive luring, loud and persistent.
Somehow, I get through the day, muttering away the voices in my head that are arguing the pro’s and con’s of smoking.
On my way home, I pass a shop I’d previously bought my smokes at and hit the breaks, despite the voice saying, “don’t do it, see if you can hold out just a little bit longer.’ Instead I listen to the one that says ‘you’re going to start smoking again anyway, why not put yourself out of your misery right now! Live for the moment! Life is too short for the needless suffering!’
I walk in and guiltily ask for a packet of my faves – and a box of matches. Buying a lighter is just too much. After all, it’s just going to be this one.
That was two months ago and I’m puffing away more than ever.
My colleague who stopped at the same time as me? She’s still going strong and reaping the rewards of being a non-smoker.
The difference between the two of us? The voices in our heads we chose to listen to, I think.
Tell us, who of you are just dying to stop and for those who’ve managed to kick the habit – how did you do it and would you ever go back?
* Kim van Reizig is a journalist at YOU