10 months of clean lungs

I used to be a smoker. I’ve been clean for 10 months now.

I stopped cold turkey. Was it easy? No. Was it hard? Not really. I’d been smoking for 10 years and one day started having chest pains. Immediately I thought there was something wrong with my lungs. For sure I had cancer and I had brought it upon myself. Stupid little girl. My first thought was “Oh my God the treatment is gonna be so expensive” followed by “I’m gonna lose my hair” and last but most important “my dad is going to kill me”.

So, that same night I decided that come July 1st (it was the middle of June) I’d stop and so I did.

Now it’s time for the question that most of the people ask me when I tell them about my journey, do you feel different physically? do you feel better? and the answer is not really. Still sluggish, I still have a hard time going up the stairs and honestly I haven’t seen a big improvement overall.

What I have seen a big difference on is stress and anxiety. Like many others, smoking was my outlet, my savior and now that I don’t have that anymore I’ve turned to coffee. It’s not the same thing though, doesn’t work as well.

If you’re a smoker and want to quit I have a tip that helped me loads.

Have you seen those pieces of paper stuck to boards with phone numbers that you can take with you? That’s what I did, took a piece of paper wrote down from 1 to 30 with an inspiring quote such as “you can do it” or “Kicking nicotine’s ass”. Each day I would tear off a number. Visualizing what I was doing and seeing how I was progressing was of huge help. I didn’t want to let the piece of paper down (and of course myself). I kept all those small numbered pieces of paper as I reminder of what I’m capable of doing,

Probably what prides me the most was the fact that even going through something so deep, heartbreaking and life changing as losing my father didn’t make me go back to my sucky habit, instead I stuck to it and kept going.

Point is, kudos for me! I don’t think I say this enough but I’m extremely proud of myself for that huge accomplishment. Oh and to all those series and movies that make smoking so freaking appealing, you can go f&”K yourselves 😛

All my love,

C.