Deliverance

This time of year is one of resolutions. This week, two years ago, I gave up smoking after twenty seven years of the filthy habit.

It was, in all honestly, the very best thing I have ever done for my health. Hence me choosing this post for The Weekend Rewind  that Allison of the Pink Fibro graciously hosts...

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I am free.

No panic or fear or that awful empty feeling of deprivation.

Free.

Smoked my final fag today. Made me feel as sick as a dog.

No more. Ever.

I am actually feeling interestingly excited. I almost feel like a fog (a literal one as well as a physical one) has been lifted. And after twenty seven years, it's a relief. A long overdue relief.

I am embarrassed to admit that I am baffled as to why I never chose to ditch this disgusting habit earlier.

I have just read Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking (It was actually a gift from me to my lovely husband for Christmas. He got to page nine and discarded. I picked it up and read it in an evening. What an utterly marvellous book it is,  for its purpose.)

I am, based on the advice of the book, following Mr Carr's instructions one hundred percent, and so I am also giving up all nicotine and its replacement products. (This also means letting go of the cost of the bloody patches, in dollars and skin rashes.....)

Hello sweet breath, goodbye certain death. Thank you world. I am a non smoker.

Again, I am totally confused as to why this decision took me so long. I managed to not smoke through my pregnancies, and I have never smoked in front of the children. I guess it's a mark of the addiction that I still held onto to the final few cigarettes and the mini holiday I perceived they gave me?

I feel like I have been wearing the highest, most uncomfortable, pinching heels in the history of womankind. And I have finally been allowed to take them off. Ahhhhhh. Sweet blissful deliverance. My mind is free.

(Note: On doing a Google on Allen Carr I realise that he actually died of lung cancer in November of 2006. How very sad. Not me though.)

I know that this will last forever, this quitted business. I cannot tell you how happy I am about that.

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January 2011 update - I am still a non smoker. 2009's resolution was achieved. It's as if I never smoked. I dare say, I am annoyingly evangelical about my anti-smoking. And still proud of it.