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I am a weak, weak person. At around 7 PM this evening, I succumbed to the call of the cancer stick. It was bed weather. Traffic along the South Luzon Expressway was moving slowly. I was listening to Concrete Blonde’s version of Ghost Riders in the Sky. I couldn’t help it. One week after I vowed to fight the good fight against Nicotine, I lost the battle. BUT NOT THE WAR!

I’m thinking maybe I did it wrong. I went cold turkey after 5 years of being a chain smoker. I never stopped smoking for more than a couple of days during the last 5 years, and now I suddenly expelled nicotine from my life. It was hard. Harder than saying “no” to free beer. Harder than not looking at a hot woman’s cleavage. Harder than closing a browser tab that contains your Plurk window. Going cold turkey wasn’t fun. It was torture. Happy torture. What?

I couldn’t ignore all the moments I felt the urge to light a stick and smoke my lungs out. I felt anti-social passing up on invitations to smoke from my co-workers. Every time I reached for a stick and found nothing there, I whispered expletives to myself. “Fuck you, self! The fuck’s your problem?!” But every time I resisted those seductive moments, I celebrated with a stupid smile. Happy torture. Weird, but there you go.

The first puff from the first cigarette I smoked in a week felt and tasted like the first cigarette I smoked all those years ago. I loved and hated it all at the same time. I loved it for reminding of my cold and carefree college nights. I hated it because, really, the smell of cigarette smoke is bugging me now. Crazy, right?

Right around Day 3 or Day 4 of this “mission”, I started to smell the smokers in the office. See, if you’re a smoker, you don’t notice the repulsive smell of cigarette smoke that clings to clothes. I didn’t notice that particular smell for years, but once I started to smell it again, I realized I don’t like it. That’s a good thing.

I’m going to try this thing again, but maybe not through the cold turkey approach. Obviously, I don’t have the discipline to do that. I’m already starting to hate the smell of smoking, and judging by the fact that I’m not too crazy about finishing a pack tonight, I’m thinking there’s hope for me yet. Who knew I’d be a prissy semi-non smoker after only a week of trying to quit, right?

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