..just BAM and the smoke smells way to good.

The smell of cigarette smoke is doing me in.

My main question is: why now?  Why now am I feeling so vulnerable when faced with the urge to smoke.  The urge that for months has been completely absent and is now rearing it’s alluring inviting enticing ugly head?  Before all I had to do was remind myself how hard it was so stop, the health benefits – both immediate (ability to breath) and future (life itself),how unfair it was to keep smoking after my finance quit, how much I wanted to do this for my father.  Once I reminded myself of these things the desire to smoke would vanish instantaneously.  Now as I sit here I find myself wondering what all the fuss was about.  I miss it.

The funny thing is that I have always been really firm in my commitments to stop something.  Too firm at times perhaps.  It has gone so far as to take on a defining quality.  I AM that person who is strong willed, hard headed, and stubborn.  Who can set her mind to anything (self control wise) and just do it.  Once I concede that it’s time to give something up – well that’s it – done, finito, gone.  But therein lies the problem.

I have become so internally defined with my ability to limit and restrict that I can’t stop.  I have come to thrive on (or rather suffer from) my personal, epic battles of will power.

But now I am left asking: in constantly ’taking away’ from myself with goals of raising my own personal bar, what am I going to be left with?  Life is slowly but surely loosing the fun, the carefree, the enjoyable.  I actually once considered myself SPONTANEOUS.  Where have those days gone?  According to the records I am only 21 years old after all.

Can you understand how unsettling it is to have such urges to smoke?  If I were to give in to such an urge, where would the cycle lead me?  How would I define myself?  How would others’ view of me change?  If I started smoking again and told myself that if I quit once I could do it again – what would stop me from starting everything else I have stopped with the same justification.  What would stop me from winding up back in my car, family and friendless, with drugs as my sole desired companion.  Drugs and words anyway.  I have always believed a saying I once heard, something that has always stuck with me: The first time you try to quit, it’s easy. [ I take that to mean relatively so - in other words, don't throw away your one 'free-pass'.  Not that it is exactly 'easy' the first time, but I sure as hell don't want to know what the non-easy subsequent tries are like.]

I am leading this refined and sifted life that I (non-religiously) imposed upon myself.  For me it has always been all or nothing.  Entirely ‘out there’ or entirely ’here’.  Entirely absent or entirely present.  For some reason there is no give and take in me – it’s entirely give or entirely take.

Why the sudden insecurities?  Nothing bad, nothing troubling, no real bout of depressive thoughts – just BAM and the smoke smells way to good.