One Friday night in early October when my occasional cigarette had become oh, a pack or two a week habit again, we were finishing dinner and Stuart was going to pop down to the store for something and I asked him, shamefully, if he’d bring me a fresh pack. I think that was Stuart’s break point; he’d been quietly un-judgies about my slide back into smokerdom but that night he asked if I was ever really going to stop. And no, he wasn’t going to buy those cigarettes.
He went to the store and my heart broke a little because I didn’t like the weakness and the addiction, although I did (and probably still would) always enjoy smoking itself. When he came home I said that maybe I should try the patch. I said I’d start the next day. Some part of me said it on a whim – maybe to redeem myself to Stuart, maybe to dare myself into trying. Regardless, I meant it. An hour or so later, when I was going batty from a few hours’ withdrawal, Stuart admitted he had bought a pack, and did I want just one, before bed?
It was the kindest thing he could have done, and probably the hardest. But I had that one and made him promise he’d take the pack and throw it away immediately. I didn’t even want to see it.
The next day, as I was tidying before we went out to brunch with a stop at the drugstore for patches, I noticed some books sticking out of the shelf. When I pushed them in, I realized there was something behind them. The pack, hidden by Stuart in the way I used to hide them when I was secretly smoking. My heart dropped out the bottom of my feet. Stuart was at the grocery store. Here I was in the house with them, freshly resolved to give them up. I could take one. I could smoke it and throw away the tough-cornered willpower I’d found last night.
I don’t know how long I stood there but something forced me to push down the ridiculous tears and put the goddamned things on the kitchen table. I kept cleaning. Furiously. I avoided the kitchen. When Stuart came home I told him, and he heard where we stood, Cigarettes and I. Maybe that was the first time we both realized I was serious. Then he took me to the drugstore and helped me put the patch on and took me to a delicious brunch and I haven’t had a cigarette in six months, today, not even one. Which, so that you have some context, is the longest I’ve ever gone. I don’t think any moment was as hard as the one standing at the bookshelf holding my beloved Camel Lights, so it’s good I got the worst out of the way first. It’s also good to have my prize.
See, two weeks later, as he agreed that night of the last cigarette, we went to the shelter and came home with Nano. Stuart told me I couldn’t smoke and have a dog. Beyond the practicality of not being able to afford the two fairly expensive habits, he knew he could give me something on which to pin my resolve. It worked. He still jokes that if I go back to smoking, he’ll take Nano back to the shelter but we both know Nano is for keeps. So are my slowly recuperating lungs.