Sleeping, eating, exercise and Guitar Hero

At this time these are the only activities that I have found that actually accomplish keeping my mind off of the "omnipotent" cigarette.........and that, my friends, is one hell of a sad state of affairs!

I have heard the stories of people smoking one and then putting the rest of the pack in their pocket, and then toting that pack around with them for the next 20 years, if only to remind them of their commitment to stay away. I can guarantee you only one thing....had I kept a pack around, if only to remind me, that sucker would have been destroyed in a tragic fire by now. I'm not talking about the kind of fire that is accidentally started, this fire would have been encouraged and restarted at least twenty different times.

Here is my least favorite questions thus far: "So, Is your house like, spotless, when I quit smoking I scrubbed everything in the house, anything to keep my mind off of smoking?" To which I reply: "Hell no!" Honestly. All I want to do is eat, exercise and play Guitar Hero, nothing else is stopping the monster inside my head.

Ole brother of mine was putting on his shoes early this morning...and I asked: "Are you going out or just to the dump to haul off the trash?" to which he replied with total dead pan: "I would love to just go out, leave for a few hours, but alas, there are two little boys sleeping in the next room, whom I love, and don't want any harm to come to, I must be here to protect them." I smiled, and then asked him to buy me some cigarettes while he was out.......then told him that I would kick his tail if he did.

It is like battling depression and heroine addiction at the same time. It is truly frightening to find out just how addicted to smoking I had become.

Earlier I mentioned the cigarette as being omnipotent, and in the nicotine addiction riddled mind that is Michelle I, at times, believe in these powers. I could handle this ______________ (<---------here you can insert almost any situation, good or bad) a whole lot better if I could smoke just one. I have given the cigarette powers for which it was not designed, or was it?

OK, I tried it cold turkey, and that frightened most people. Went to the store and proudly proclaimed "I need to purchase some patches before I kill someone!" Somehow, that was not all that funny to the store employees, sometimes these lines are just much better in my head......The patch helped the first couple of days, it was kind of like being on speed (from what people have told me, not personal experience), which I thought was helping, now I am not so sure. I think today we are going to go "nicotine free", what really is the point in substituting one for the other, the point here is to be free from that addiction, not to place it in a more socially acceptable, and possibly less deadly, form. The point is to be free, and, honestly, I still want to kill people with the patch on, so why not go for broke?

What is the point to all of this in a post? It is, well, multifaceted, in a way, I am looking to accomplish several things.......Writing is also one of those things that has always, in the past, helped me to enter into a different perspective, a different world of sorts, and that is always a good thing. If I write about some things I am taking away their power to destroy me, or so I believe. Finally, now you know, not that I am a wimp and having a hard time with something that I should have done years ago, but that I am no longer a smoker. Feel free to remind me of this in the future.

I may delete this post...