Sleepless in Daleside..

Hanging in there..

Shit, but this is soo difficult. I hardly slept last night. My thoughts mill around smoking and cigarettes all the time. Every minute is a fight against the urge.

I got home last night and removed the last traces of my habit in the house. Ashtrays out, lighter packed into the Survival camping kit and trash thrown out. Then watched tv and chewed tooth-picks till 2am this morning. Finally fell asleep around 2:30 or so. Back up with the alarm at 04:30. I've got the recovery time table up in front of me in the office, and so far I've reached two milestones:

Within..

20 minutes - Your blood pressure, pulse rate, and the temeperature of your hands and feet(don't ask?) will all return to normal.

True - I'm less out of breath, and even though I am relatively fit, I can breathe deeper than I use to.

12 hours - Your blood oxygen level will have increased to normal and carbon monoxide levels will have dropped to normal.

True - I feel less "toxic" Really! It's difficult for me to explain, but my sinuses feel better, I no longer sniff all the time and although I still have an occational cough it's less bronchital. I'm also not as tired as I used to be either. Normally by 8 or 9pm I'm dead on my feet. I hardly ever finished watching a movie with B in the past.

Fuck! The crucial milestone only occurs around the two week mark when(they say); your body will have rid itself of the 3500 or so chemical particals and 500 gases present in each and every puff. Your body can again function without nicotine.

I will do this.

Dying..

for a smoke.

18 January 2009 11:00am cat - Stopped smoking today.

Yesterday morning at about 11am I ran out of cigarettes. So I grabbed my helmet and jumped on the bike, but just before reaching the gate I realized I had forgotten my bank card. Back in the house I searched high and low, but couldn't find it. I remembered then that It was lying on my desk at work.

You cannot imagine what angst went through my mind. I've been a smoker for 27years and the thought of going without a cigarette till Monday morning was impossible to comprehend. I racked my brain, even considered making a sigarette from the loose butts in the ashtray(if you're not a smoker, you cannot understand addiction).

Then an idea struck me; I'd just phone B down the road, explain my situation and ask her to buy me smokes till I can replace them on Monday, which I promptly did(phone, that is). B said that she was parked in by guests at that moment, but would get to it soon enough. Eventually I phoned her again, but she said she had to go somewhere else first. I told her to leave it.

By that time a weird thought had entered my mind; what if I stopped right now? It was late afternoon, and I had already stopped for longer than I had ever before, whilst not sleeping.

It is now Monday morning and I still haven't smoked. The fact that cigarettes are easily available here in the office is not helping, nor the fact that our cleaning lady sells loose cigarettes and keeps a lighter handy for a quick light-up.

To those of you who know what I'm going through, wish me luck, I'm gonna need it.

Ad infinitum

Black again..

My bed an empty canvas, an untouched sheet of emptiness
I love the aura your soul leaves behind when you leave.

Now all I tasted and breathed has left.

I know you gave me all that you had,
and now my bitter hands shake from your absence.

All the pictures have been washed in black, tattooed in shades of dark grey.
In my dream I walk outside, I'm surrounded by your kids that play.
I can feel their laughter, and still I fear.
These picket-fence thoughts that spin round my head...

How quick the sun can drop away...
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass
of what was everything?

All the pictures had been washed in black, I covered everything.
All the love gone bad, turned my world to black.
Black is all that I see, all that I am, all I'll ever be

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, maybe you'll be a star
in somebody else's sky..

This time.. I don't mind.