I quit when I became pregnant with my daughter, almost eight years ago. I don’t remember it being hard at all. It was for her, so I didn’t have a choice. I just stopped and that was it. Maybe it didn’t hurt so much because, since I was pregnant, I had pretty much carte blanche to behave however I wanted. Unless she’s actively harming you or someone you love, it’s pretty difficult to chastise a pregnant woman for very much. For years, I forgot about it completely. Smoking didn’t even occur to me. I looked down on smokers. They were weak, gross, self absorbed. Didn’t they know that they could just decide to be finished with it all? Why would they be so unwilling to stop such an obviously foul and dangerous activity? I was sad for them.

Six months ago, I found myself once again with a cigarette snuggled firmly between the index and middle finger of my right hand. I’m not sure how it started. There were friends and nights out, there was a road trip, and at the end of it all there was me, once again a smoker. I can just smoke one at the end of every day, I’d thought, just to relax. I can come outside and sit in the quiet and look at the sky and have my single cigarette and unwind. I can absolutely control myself enough to just smoke one. I am an adult and a she-monster of mythical proportions and I can decide things for myself. But! Of course I couldn’t. In a week I was smoking half a pack a day and by the two week mark I was up to the entire pack. At first I tried to be stealthy, only smoking when my husband wasn’t looking or my kids were in bed, but eventually I branched out to smoking whenever the hell I wanted to, no matter who was looking. Because it was important. It was something I had to do. I wound up, once again, with the small circle of mildewed chairs and the bucket in my backyard and a reason to sit and think and look at the sky for a few minutes every hour or so.

My daughter knew better than to try to appeal to my sense of self preservation, she skipped me and went straight to frogs. She would latch on to me at bedtime, dramatically, with a frown on her seven year old face and in the most stern voice she could muster, she would shame me for killing frogs. “They’re already EXTINCT in some places!” (Here she would stop to glare at me a little extra.) “They’re dying because of TOBACCO. They’re dying because of YOU.” (This is the part where I google “tobacco is killing frogs” and get three results from shoddy sources and realize that my daughter is a very, very good liar).

Eight days ago, I smoked my last cigarette. It isn’t easy this time. It hurts. I wander around, feeling like there’s something I’m supposed to be doing but coming up empty. I’m crabby, and sad, and my hands feel completely useless; I have absolutely no idea what to do with them. Assuming the average length of each one of my cigarette breaks is seven minutes, then 13 percent of each 18 hour day is devoted to smoking, but I feel idle and confused and frustrated most of the time that I’m awake. Yesterday, I walked in aimless circles until finally giving up and forcing my children to play and craft with me. Cutting paper, gluing things, stringing beads, my kids are so sick of crafts that I think they’re starting to avoid me. Shunned by them by mid-afternoon, I busied myself by making three different loaves of bread. Between mindless snacking and frenzied baking, I ate at least a stick of butter over the course of a single day. But at least, I told myself at the end of the night while undoing the button of my suddenly-tight pants, at least I’m doing this for my health.

Last week, I would have celebrated coming to the end of writing this piece by sitting in my mildewed chair and smoking a cigarette underneath a clear, cold sky. Maybe today I’ll just grab a tub of margarine and go outside to think about frogs.