One month gone and three dates

The road hasn’t been smooth. I have succumbed and joined the ciggie lepers in my high stress moments.
I considered ringing the advice line one day, and changed my mind because it felt silly. None of my friends called the advice line to stop smoking, and not only this, I do wonder if the people on the other side are ex smokers or if they are smoker Nazis.
I had three dates: with smokers.

It didn’t help my will power one little bit.

Their names are Jason, Tim and Ben. I'll elaborate a little later.

Relapse

I knew this would happen. It was all right for the first few days, then the weekend popped up and it culminated in a drinking spree. We won an account, and it saw us trot off to the local. I stepped in two mounds of shit.
The first mound of shit involved a little too much alcohol. This resulted in flirting with interstate account manager; heat dripped from his fucking lapels! Armond (it's what I prefer to call him on this blogger thing) has lived here for five years, and has a chocolate smooth accent. He whispered in my ear; let's go somewhere else Didi.
Try to quit smoking with a French man breathing against your ear...

We strolled to the Mariott, his temporary abode, and I'll keep it short but I bounced up and down on his bed, telling him to buy me one. "ah, mon cherie," he laughed, and it may be cliche, but it got me going, so much, that I practically fell into his limbs. Our mouths were more intrepid than Al Gore, traversing every microclimate; tongue, taste buds, and his fingers ensured that my core temperature would rise; global bodily warming.

So we did it. We fucked, and in my stupor or weakness, I relented. I don't know. Maybe I liked the way he lit two cigarettes in his mouth, offering me one with a James Dean cocked eyebrow.

"This is a mini break," he said.
There was more?

and there was. More, so much more. My head did spin with the first drag, and his hands wandered down south, and pressed the right button, and that can be a rarity.

Rejection

I almost caved in. Okay, I did cave in, but only one.

In the few days I have stuck these patches on me, I have digested plenty calories.

Work birthday party:

“Come on Didi, have another!” (Krispy Kreme donut)
“Awww…no.”
“Go on! Try the chocolate.”

Everything is starting to taste different. Normal. Nicer.

I have also retired to bed earlier, not to think about the ordeal that can grip me like it does in the few intervals throughout the day.

“Why didn’t you call me back, Didi?”
“I was busy.”
“Do you want to see Hairspray?”
“Um. I’m trying to quit smoking and I’m focusing on that.”
“Oh.”

He wasn’t that exciting, and he’s a smoker. Is it wrong to distance myself from that?

It’s all about finding things to do. Substituting the cigarettes with other things. Things that I need to make time for. Example: the gym. My schedule is currently over-the-top, but since I have been on these sticky patches, I have been waking up earlier each day. There is hope.

It is not enough the food being a battle……

There is a positive in all this. I am hopeful in this first step to eradicate toxic nicotine. The other thing: I think I have over-masturbated with my Rabbit.

Is there such a thing?

Baby Steps

“My anxiety acts like aerobics, so I get the exercise.”

I was watching Woody Allen in Scoop and he explains his ability to metabolize the bread in front of him in one scene where Scarlet Johansson’s character explains that she’d gain twenty pounds if she ate that much bread.

I felt anxious. I opened the packet of nicotine patches and looked at them. I sat down, and I looked at them. Kept on looking at them. It was the huge step for me. Stupid really. I thought of weekends out with the girls. I thought of the mornings at the café. Childish, considering all the television campaigns and graphic images of the hazards: life or death, mainly death.

I ripped open the packet, read the instructions and stuck the patch on my arm.

A baby step.

I just hope I don't develop a new addition, along the lines to a Tori Amos song, "She's addicted to Nicotine patches."

Things: A Sorta Meltdown

I’m beginning this page as a form of therapy? Silly I suppose. I have read that it helps to write down each experience, feeling and moment as it happens, especially if a personal crisis looms and change is a necessity.

Standard crisis:

Single, thirties and single.

I had a moment of temporary bliss, the kind of bliss that attaches itself to a new person or the chance of that person being a possible anything (I’ve never liked to assume things) but damn, it could have been. Bits in the new person’s life differed from mine. We had met twice before the third time, and the third time he remarked on the cigarette smell. It was as if this markedly changed his stance.

Midweek, I received news of my non-promotion, something I’d hoped would happen after putting in hours, expanded my knowledge and a younger candidate was moved – higher. She is 22, and the opposite of me. I feel 38, at 28, or felt like a bovine member of the frumpy herd. Not to say that 38 is frump city. She struts, tosses her glossy straight hair and is ecstatic about her promotion. I have three years more experience.

I could shift or evaporate the few extra pounds.

I could update my wardrobe a little, and the elimination of the pounds would mean an altogether different wardrobe; shorter skirts and tighter or fitted tops.

The moment of collision where change howls into your ear is probably up there with the most important life moments. It’s a bell that requests attention and I didn’t want to listen to it. I didn’t but I felt like I couldn’t mute the sound of thought that took hold. It was like rushing into shattered moments.

“It’s a shame, for such a pretty face.”

I decided to make changes. Changes to habits, physique and (what I hope, as a result of the former) my overall self.

I don’t want to be something that I’m not, an unrealistic figurine, but I do have things that I need to change:

Quit smoking.

Exercise more.

Find the me beneath the superfluous lead-like layers that I have made over the years.