First Anniversary of Quit Smoking (21st of March, 2008)
I’ve never celebrated any of my birthday. I’ve also barely attended any birthday celebration of my friends. I always insist that celebrating one’s birthday is a waste of time. Besides birthday is not worth celebrating. If anything, everyday should be celebrated because every single day is important. For me, today is as important as yesterday, tomorrow, next month and next year, etc.
But this time around I want to do it. I should celebrate this day–even just by writing about it– because I consider today as one of those pivotal moment in my life. An achievement of short. Today last year was where I started to quit smoking. And from then on not a single cigarette comes in between my lips. It’s been a big success because I’ve been trying many times before to no avail.
And I am happy with that. I am happy for more than one reasons:
First, independence. In my whole life what I feel proud of myself, if anything, is my independency. For the better or the worse, I am proud of the fact that I am known as independent individual who doesn’t like to depend on something or someone or at least try hard to be so. Being independent is a virtue which make a person’s dignity, among other things, looks outstanding. Despite dependency on smoking is nothing to do with it, it feels good to be independence from it.
Second, health. Ask every chain smokers, deep in their hearts they worried about the future of their health. They keep smoking because they simply couldn’t get away from this habit. I am happy I no longer have that health-scary feeling.
Third, feeling more freedom literally. If you going abroad frequently you’d feel more freedom literally if you are not a smoker. More and more airports are restricting smokers to smoke freely. Some airports give a smoking-area which is narrower by the day. Making the smokers like a bunch of drug addicts gathering in one place for something many people wonder. By quit smoking, you’ll no longer have the drug-addict image. More important, you no longer feel marginalized.
Fourth, sexy mouth. Well, ask your spouse. Your mouth smells sexier without cigarette.