12 Years
This week I hit 12 years without smoking a single cigarette. When I made the choice to stop smoking, I knew it would be a big one. But I didn’t understand how monumental it would be, dare I say, cataclysmic. Everything in my life changed.
I’ve been asked relentlessly how I did it. It’s a very unexciting answer. I just did it. I bought a pack of cigarettes and said to myself, this is the last pack. I savored every single one of those babies. They all became so special and precious, because they were the last ones. And when it really did come down to the last one, I will never forget it. Pulling the pack out of my bag, opening up the top. Seeing it. Running it between my fingers. Stopping my girlfriends on our walk so I could light up, taking that last first drag… I was in Chicago, I was barely 22. We were all heading to a local bar to celebrate the closing of a show. Man…. that was a different girl.
The next morning I started running, and I promise you it was awful. But I got up and ran every day, and that spring I did another crazy thing. I stopped drinking Diet Coke. Then I joined a CF box. I permanently moved to Chicago. Next thing you know I’m training for my first triathlon. After that I’m supposed to head to NYC for a six week gig, which turned into ten years of a completely different life and dream. I ended up quitting drinking in 2015, three years after quitting smoking. Soon after that I was forced into no longer eating gluten or so many other precious treats (cough ice cream cough).
I’ve been quitting things for so long, it makes holding onto the things I can have so much more precious. Once I was told that I would probably never be able to drink coffee again. Can you IMAGINE?! After so many things being stripped from me, to also lose that precious morning ritual… I cried for days, y’all. So you can imagine my delight when we found out the real issue was caffeine, not coffee. Decaf was back in business, baby.
Let’s circle back to quitting smoking. Quitting in general. Maybe I should stop thinking of it as quitting, and more like choosing a new beginning. I made the decision (a choice), to live, even though it didn’t feel that way at the time. Typing that out feels so profound to me. In these 12 years I have done a lot of soul searching, a lot of learning, chipping away at myself. It is uncomfortable to wake up and choose to grow - I have yet to meet someone who genuinely enjoys that part of soul searching. It is hard work and effort. In these 12 years, I have found that in order for me to continue to grow, to stay in that uncomfortable place, I have to choose to move. The more stagnant I find myself, the more insurmountable the daily tasks seem. Breathing becomes difficult. It doesn’t have to be complicated, fancy, hours on end. It can be as simple as moving through a few yoga poses for the morning, or a nice neighborhood walk after the girls wake up from their nap.
It really is that simple. I really do mean it. I smoked my last cigarette, and the next day I ran a mile. And I haven’t looked back. What do you do to keep yourself moving forward? How do you process self-discovery? What have you chosen to do to grow?