Keys to Stop Smoking: From Having an Incentive to Avoiding Temptation

I smoked. I smoked a lot, and by a lot I mean on average, a pack and a half a day for close to two years.

I was 17 when I started, and 18 when it got out of hand. For the first year and some change, I smoked only socially, or while I drove. Soon it became as soon as I woke up. Sometimes waking up at night just to smoke. I would stare at my ceiling and smoke two or three cigarettes, thinking about nothing but the feel of the smoke passing through my mouth. I would smoke at work, at home, at friends' houses, after I did something, and always before. Smoking for me was a release. It calmed my anxiety and made me feel better. Smoking was my life. It was the one thing that kept me from falling off the edge, and the one thing that was a constant in my life. I had no intentions to quit. I loved smoking. I loved to try new cigarettes, and I loved the feeling I got, no matter how sick it sometimes made me. I didn't want to quit, I wasn't going to quit. Then I met him.

Daniel James. 5 foot 11 inches of pure perfection. Gorgeous brown eyes and big pouty lips. Completely irresistible. Except one fact that I knew could hinder any chance of being even friends with him; he doesn't smoke. Not just "doesn't smoke" but hates smoking. Thinks it's disgusting, and gross. Therefore, I felt that he saw me as disgusting, and gross. Finally one night I told him I was quitting. But I wouldn't say why. Just that at 10:00pm on November 7th, 2007, I was going to take my last puff and be done for good. Cold turkey. Done. That's it.

When he asked me the next day why I quit I told him, "Because you don't smoke". He was completely taken aback. "You quit for me?" he asked me completely astonished. That wasn't the only thing he asked me that day.