One Year Ago

I sat on my porch, watched the sun go down and smoked the last cigarette I've had to date. It was kind of on a whim. I had two left over that I had thought about spreading out to my daughter's birthday on the Third, but decided that left too much to chance. So I broke them up, went in and told Ruth what I had done. We sat on the couch and watched Lawrence of Arabia while I detoxed that first night. She sat with me like that for months. I started smoking when I was fourteen, that's twenty four years. I'd been smoking two packs a day since the nineties. I believe strongly that my being able to quit and stay quit had very little to do with self-will, or determination.