The day I quit smoking.

It's now the afternoon of the day I quit smoking and things aren't nearly as bad as I thought they were going to be. I thought I was going to be a nervous wreck by now, tearing out my hair and pacing the floor, searching through the trash for cigarette buds, being emotional and desperate, going to the gas station for a pack of cigarettes and all sorts of other things.

Well, I had all these scenarios in mind, but not the actual one, and that is that I'm pretty calm and only go through cravings sometimes and have a peppermint if I do. That seems to do the job. Every once in a while a sense of panic hits me when I realize that I can't smoke, but I quickly subdue it and tell myself not to be a wuss. There are worse things in life.

I know that if I were to light a cigarette now, I would suffer from a terrible coughing fit and would not enjoy it at all. I would be bent over double from coughing, because I would not be used to smoking anymore. I do realize now that I had a chronic little cough with phlegm all day long and I really need to get rid of that and I'll be happy when I have. It's not healthy and it is my goal to be. I want my lungs to be clean and my bronchi to be in good shape.

I bought the bag of peppermints at the pharmacy. It's a good thing that they sell candy there, because I bought it as an afterthought and it has come in so handy. It really takes care of the mild frustration I feel when I have a craving for a cigarette. When my mouth wants to be occupied.

I find keeping my mind occupied works well too. Reading is a good activity. I've started a new novel. A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons and I'm reading it quickly, because it's that kind of a book. It reads very easily, but I think maybe I'm better able to read now that I'm not distracted by my smoking. I can pay better attention and not worry about the ashes falling on my book and having to light up another cigarette yet again.

Every once in a while I think, oh, I will light up a cigarette, but then I think, oh no, I will not, and am disappointed for just a split second, but I am immediately relieved again because I don't have to. It's not a compulsion. I can live without it.

The domestic help has been here and cleaned the apartment and I have also liberally sprayed all the rooms with air freshener and opened the windows wide. The ashtrays have been washed and put away. I will not be using them anymore, nor will anyone else, unless they go outside. It's nice to have clean, never to be used again ashtrays. They will be museum pieces soon.

I wonder what smoking does to your psyche while you inhale all those different chemicals that manufacturers put in the tobacco to get you hooked? It must have all sorts of psychological effects on you that happen as a result of the chemical reactions in your brain. It can't help but be a mood altering drug or drugs. I wonder very much how I am going to be feeling over the next weeks and months. I bet I'm going to see an improvement in my mood and my overall mental health. That's something that really motivates me. I want to see how my total health improves.

I remember when I started smoking more than 40 years ago and how tough it was to start and how I really had to fight my body's resistance against the nicotine. For some reason I was determined to smoke and within a very short time I was hooked. I never was hooked on anything else but nicotine, but it bit me good. I'm just as determined to quit now. I should say, to stay quit, because I already have quit.

I'm going to finish reading my book now. I have the feeling that I'll be doing a lot of reading in the near future. Luckily, I have enough books to read. And interesting ones too.

Have a good afternoon!

Ciao,

Nora.

Friday at the best time of the day...

I'm saying that, but I don't know at all if it's true. I'm just saying it as a wishful way of thinking, to make it come true, because I'll be darned if I'm not going to feel well now.

I'm sitting here with a big glass of juice and a cigarette and the dog at my feet. Outside it's -3C, which is an improvement, because this morning it was -7C and that was just a little bit colder. My sister and I were at the grocery store before 8 am and we had to wait just a few minutes in the cold before the manager opened the doors. It makes you think of homeless people immediately and how they manage to get through the night.

We got our groceries done fast enough and were home by 8:30 am. I unloaded everything very quickly and had something to eat, but because I only had 6 hours of sleep, I realized I needed to go back to bed and sleep some more, which I did. Every once in a while I woke up, but I knew it wasn't time to get up yet, until it was noontime and I felt that I was awake properly and could face the day. I let the whole thing depend on my mood. If I feel at all down and out, I don't get up, but wait until that feeling is completely gone. If I get up too soon, I will be very miserable and suffer unnecessarily and think the world is coming to an end. I can't stand any suffering. I don't do it gracefully at all.

I think I'm very sensitive to emotional pain, or maybe everybody is and I just feel more of it quicker. I feel quickly overwhelmed by my emotions and feel like they roll over me like a big strong storm that I have little control over. I get upset and distraught very easily and scared that I will fall apart. I'm very much afraid that I will lose control over the scenario and that I will lose touch with reality. Sometimes I feel myself fall apart and fly into dozens of little pieces and I become very scared and I think I will not be able to gather myself back together again.

I'm happiest when I try not to feel anything. When I'm free of emotions, although I really don't know if I actually am at that point, or if I'm just happy then about nothing at all. Just about being alive, maybe. It's when I've managed to push every obnoxious thought away and my head feels empty of them and there's only room for pleasant thoughts for a while, however small and insignificant they are. It's the absence of pain. It's in the void of that that I'm alive.

Well, so much for serious words. I have to keep in mind that I'm decreasing my medication and that I'm going to feel some emotions now that I haven't felt for some time. They have been numbed by the medicines. I've just had to take an antipsychotic tablet and not wait until tonight, because I felt my mind going through the withdrawal from that. I would normally already have had two tablets of it plus the one I didn't have last night. That's a lot all at once. It melts on your tongue, so it enters your system quickly. All I have to do now is wait for it to work.

In the meantime, while I'm preoccupied with the workings of my mind, and how can I ignore them at this point, I still haven't gotten the stamps that I need for all the Christmas cards that I wrote last night. The little post office wasn't open yet this morning, so I couldn't get them. That means I either have to go there this afternoon, or get them on Monday when I send the packages with the books. Christmas is sneaking up on me this year. I didn't realize it was next week. In my mind it was still two weeks away. I hope I'm not the only one with this problem. Tell me I'm not! Even though it's freezing outside and we've had some snow, I just wasn't ready for it to be Christmas yet. It seems to come sooner every year, but maybe that's okay, because that means winter will be over quickly and it will be springtime soon. Spoken like a real optimist, right?

I know there are people in Canada who are a heck of a lot colder than I am, that's for sure. Our little cold climate is nothing compared to theirs. They really feel what winter is all about. They live in arctic conditions. So I won't complain about the cold too much. It's not that bad after all. I'll complain when it gets to be -15C. I think I'll have every good right to then. I don't think I have clothes warm enough for that kind of weather, although I do have a really good winter coat in a Russian kind of way. It's not very stylish, but it's warm.

It's taking me forever to write this, but in the meantime my medication is working and I'm feeling a lot better, so I know what to do now. Take one tablet in the middle of the day. I just can't last so long without one. It makes my mind do funny things. It makes me feel slightly desperate.

It's very dark in here. I only have the desk lamp on and the rest of the living room is shrouded in darkness. That's because it's so cloudy outside and it wouldn't surprise me if it started to snow again. I don't like for the living room to be so dark and it certainly isn't good for my plants. Those poor things have a hard enough time as it is under my 'green' thumb. I have to change the light bulb in one of the overhead lamps. It isn't very bright and it takes a long time to get up to strength. It's an energy saving bulb that comes to life slowly and then never really makes it's promise come true. I think I will do better if I change it for another one. I don't know why this one in particular behaves this way.

Do you think that 600 grams of wet food is too much food for a medium sized dog to eat? That is 21 ounces. It seems to be what the dog needs to be satisfied. I was giving him 400 grams (14 ounces), but that was leaving him hungry and scrounging the cat food. It's the best quality dog food there is made with lean meat and vegetables.

Well, that's all for me for today. It's taken me the better part of the afternoon to write this, just about. You've gone through a whole mood change with me. I don't know if you're aware of that.

Ciao,
Nora