Quit Smoking in Four Days – or your money back! Guaranteed
I was standing in Zumba on Monday a week ago when friends said they were headed to D.C. to the inauguration. “Why don’t you come?” Oh right, as if I could just get on a plane right now with everything going on, and … . “You know it will all be here when you get back.”
And so didn’t I scramble, for a flight, to finish my project, to try to find a ball gown, to contain the excitement and yet fear to be leaving everything that was in a gumbo pot bubbling over as if someone had forgot to turn the flame down. And sure enough on Saturday morning, I left, with three intentions – 1) to have fun, 2) to witness Obama’s second inauguration, and 3) to quit smoking.
Yes, that’s right, I’m a consummate multitasker and what better time to try to quit smoking than being in freezing cold weather, in someone else’s house, and having enough fun distractions not to care. And so I did it! Yay, here we are at day 5 of no smoking and I am just now starting to feel somewhat normalized.
I take long deep breaths in and hold them. How sweet the air tastes.
My smoking habit reared its ugly head when my physical health declined. You’d think the last thing I would be doing is smoking, but the truth is I needed a crutch, something to help me cope, and I fell back on my crisis tool – smoking. But pretty soon I had ramped up my smoking to include pretty much anytime that I wasn’t sleeping and I was coughing like a seasoned professional, stinking like an ashtray, and avoiding anything and everyone that was not conducive to my smoking habit.
I arrived in D.C. and felt the hoopla energy starting to ascend and the first stop for us was Georgetown and a fabulous dinner at Das Ethiopian, which turned out to be better than good. As a matter of fact, I’m still craving the delicate injera and the tasty spices.
The next day was filled with site seeing Saint Augustine Church, called the Mother Church of African American Catholics founded in 1858 through the efforts of emancipated Black Catholics. Where I held hands with a large dark skinned man and a short eldery African American woman for the Lord’s Prayer and had to hold back the tears as I was in the serious thrust of detox from smoking and my emotions were riding high. Then we walked to the African American Civil War Memorial, which you might pass if you were not looking specifically for it:
And then on to Howard University to snap a picture of the tree where the Deltas, the sorority of my friend’s mother and my friend and to take a shot by Minerva. The Deltas were founded in 1913 and so they are celebrating their 100 year anniversary this year. We stayed on the move all day, moving from one memorial to another memory to another photo opportunity.
My emotions were riding the wave of the inauguration, being away from home when home has been so chaotic, nicotine withdrawal, and and general sense of unease despite the fact that I was amongst friends and having a great time. Other than the effects of detoxing my body, my emotional theater is so raw that I would spin from deepwell sadness to overjoyed elation to malaise to wonder to anxiety to excitement all within seconds – and all of these ranges I attempted to disguise so that my friends wouldn’t think they had invited a freakshow.