If I was given one chance to use a time machine to change one act I had done in my life, I would immediately jump into the machine and speed off to the summer holidays of 1998 when my cousin and I were sat under a tree in the park near our home. As soon as the words "teach me to inhale it properly then" escaped my mouth 2013 me would spring out and grab 1998 me and strangle her for a bit whilst screaming "don't do it!" in her face. Ah, hindsight!
It is my one and only regret in life, starting smoking. I was 14. I was impressionable and low in self confidence and I just wanted people to like me. My sister Natalie was a smoker and my cousin Rachael was a smoker and they were both just so cool. They had loads of mates and really hot male friends and everyone liked them and they just seemed so happy and they were always laughing. Did I mention I thought they were so cool? I envied them, I was desperate to be like them so - obviously - I started to dabble with the old cancer sticks.
I remember meeting my sister in Cardiff shopping centre not long after my 15th birthday and I arrived, full of cockiness, smoking my Embassy number 1 (the same brand she smoked) and the look of disappointment that etched on to her face still haunts me. It crippled me, there and then and I felt embarrassed and ashamed. This wasn't the answer to her coolness, her coolness was her coolness, smoking was just her trying to emulate Courtney Love. All I wanted to do was impress Natalie, get her to think of me as a cool mate sister not an annoying little sister. A week later when she was drunk she started crying on me pleading with me to never end up like her. I never realised how much she blamed herself for my smoking or how insecure she actually was. I saw a vulnerability that night that I had seen so many times before in myself. Unbeknown to Natalie, it was too late, that smoke had swirled straight into my heart and I had fallen head over heels in love with cigarettes.
I couldn't be a heavy smoker as I was terrified of my parents finding out so I only smoked when I was out of the house and always carried white musk body spray and chewing gum to mask the smell when I arrived home (it doesn't hide the smell at all!). I was more of a social smoker but the day Natalie died there was no going back. I ate very little and smoked an awful lot for a few months. Coping with her death was made a little bit easier by smoking. It made me keep connected to her. I would sit in the garden and admire the swirls of smoke climbing the air in a seductive trail and I'd imagine Nat next to me inhaling the vapours. Whenever I smoked Natalie was beside me. it was all I had left of her. I never for one second thought of how addicted I was or the effect it was having on my health.
When I was diagnosed with Long Q T Syndrome, hearing that I would need to have an ICD inserted to prevent a sudden death, I should have quit then to stay healthy. Instead, I smoked more. It's the worst mind trick cigarettes have on us, that it relieves stress, it doesn't it just heightens your cravings so the relief you feel is the craving being sorted out not the de-stressing of the situation.
Around two months after my ICD op I went on holiday with my boyfriend of the time and his family. His parents had no idea I smoked so I decided that I'd give it up. Back then it wasn't that hard so a week and a half clean I had the odd craving but I felt good. Two days in I started getting chest pains. I didn't want to mention it as I didn't want to be a bother and I thought it would pass. When I climbed into bed and laid down that evening I wish I had just said something. All of a sudden I just couldn't breathe properly. my chest had gone so tight it felt like it had caved in and my heart was beating so hard that it felt like it was going to break through all my bones, flesh and skin, explode out of my body and splat on to the wall. I had never felt so frightened and I honestly thought I was going to die. The pain was excruciating. I managed to walk to the room my boyfriend was sleeping in and woke him up and his Dad drove me to hospital.
The next evening, after my mum had hopped into her car and driven from Cardiff to Cornwall in the middle of the night, the same thing happened but this time I collapsed in Mum's kitchen. I was rushed to hospital and it wasn't until my cardiologist came to see me that we even realised what was going on. He explained that because my body had gone through such trauma having my ICD that a big change of not smoking was just a bit too much for my body to cope with, as the rise in my heart rate due to my body cleaning all the horrid stuff out caused the pacing part of my machine to overwork which caused me to have cardiac arrest symptoms.
Obviously, the only logical thing to do was to start smoking again. Over the next few years I lived an ordinary teenage/early 20's life. Going out drinking, smoking having a wonderful, carefree existence. I was always skint yet I could always afford tobacco. I did give it up for a couple of days but I ate so much that I started smoking again because I'd rather be a skinny smoker than an obese ex-smoker.
Fast forward to now and 15 years in It has been 78 hours since my last cigarette. I'm am really struggling to see why it seemed such a good idea. So far I have had the shakes, the sweats, hot and cold fits. Nausea, insatiable hunger. Pounding headaches, dizziness, light-headiness. My mum called into my work and I felt so depressed that when I had a hug from her I burst into tears. I felt so low that, right at that point, it felt like the last time I would ever hug her as I would rather kill myself than feel this low. Over cigarettes.
My husband is also quitting and yesterday he was chewing gum to help. As I watched him chew this gum with his mouth open like some disgusting little chav with no table manners I wanted to fully pulverise his face with a hammer so I didn't have to have the obscene chewing in my vision or my ears anymore. So in two days I have wanted to kill myself and my husband but cigarettes are just a disgusting little habit though, right?
I
know it is a disgusting habit
I
know I'm throwing money down the drain
I
know it's killing me slowly
I
know I smell of stale smoke
I
know my teeth are terrible because of smoking
I
know my nails are brittle because of smoking
It is an addiction.
Nicotine is more addictive that heroin, yet, I should be able to give it up in the flick of a switch. More people fail to give up smoking than any other substance but any kind of withdrawal I experience after 24 hours is just me being melodramatic, apparently.
I am trying my damned hardest but it is all I can think about. I keep looking at the faces of my beautiful children and thinking how many bags of tobacco can I get in exchange for them? I have even thought I wouldn't miss my legs that much if I had to have them amputated. I am that desperate for a cigarette.
There are some people who scoff at addiction too freely. Yes, it was my choice to have that cigarette when I was 14 but I didn't choose to become addicted. 14 year old self didn't know much about addiction and if I could see into the future I'm sure I would have acted differently. No one looks at a line of coke and thinks of all the junkies they know. No-one smuggles some peach schnapps out of their parents cupboard thinking of Grandpa Bob who died of liver failure. It just happens. Addiction creeps up on you like an invisible demon and ensnares you whilst you sleep. One morning, you wake up and for the first time, it's the first thing you think of. Whether it be cigarettes, alcohol or drugs that clammy hand has wrapped itself around you and it is not letting you go. Pretty much everyone I know is addicted to alcohol, not in a 'I need a drink as soon as I'm awake' sense but in a 'I can't contemplate a night out without alcohol' sense. I found cutting alcohol out easy as cherry pie but cigarettes are on a different scale. it's the routine, the habit. That satisfying one after a meal, the one before bed, the two I cram into a lunch break, the one I have walking to and from work. The one with a cup of tea and a biscuit at 4pm as my children watch cartoons. I miss it. I am mourning cigarettes just like a person. After all it's the longest relationship I've had.
I'm just sat on my sofa, weeping like a baby, finding it impossible to do anything but daydream of when I smoked. The days when I was sat on the bench in my garden - without a care in the world - watching the swirls being inhaled by my ghost sister, back when all it was was to be cool, just like Natalie. If I do that though, if I go back, I will end up just like her, I will be a ghost watching my children grow up and reach milestones that they think I can't see. I will watch them without them knowing. I will see them wipe the tears as they wish that I could be there with them.
I will try with every fibre of my being to not let them down and that's all I can do and if I fall I will just try and try again.
I did look cool though...
