So there I am in my bed it is about 3:30AM and I haven't slept a wink, eyes wided open just too nervous to sleep this night, I know there will be no sleep tonight, you see tomorrow is a big day, really big day for me. I am in the little bedroom I share with my brother in our small 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house, one bathroom and 6 people, how did that ever work? Any way tomorrow was going to be a big day for me, probably the biggest day of my life certainly the biggest day of my life so far in my 18 years on this earth. I use to smoke in my bedroom and had a glass half filled with water that was my ashtray that I kept under my bed, when I was done with my cigarrette I would push the still lit butt down into the brown swamppy looking liquid to extinquish it. Looking through the murky water in the glass I bet I had a whole packs worth of butts squeezed into this glass. I had to be ready to leave at 5:00AM who could sleep, leaving my family for the first time never knowing when or if I would ever return. You see this was 1968 and I was leaving in the morning for the Army. The Viet Nam war was at its height and everyone my age was being drafted unless you were going to college but you see I wasn't going to college, why? Because I was one of the cool kids, oh yeah the ones that cut classes so they could go smoke, the ones that smoked in the boys bathroom and got caught and had detention most of the year, the one that had his cigs rolled up in the sleeve of his tee shirt for every one to see how cool he was. Just one cool dude laying in this bed all alone not feeling too cool right now. My father was going to take me down to the bus terminal to take a bus to my future I remember the anxiety I was thinking about what am I going to do on a long bus ride if I can't smoke, how about when I finally get to boot camp they won't let us smoke you see even at 18 this cool kid was a slave that early in life, even then it ruled my life. I was leaving for 3 years, never had been away from home and really didn't think I could possibly do this Army thing, I didn't have the right stuff for this I knew that deep down inside you see all this time I was getting by just being cool, now I actually had to do something and I was very scared of failing and exposing myself as a fraud. Quitting smoking was exactly the same, afraid of failing, didn't think I had the right stuff, well the Army turned out to be one of life's biggest challenges and I beat that and now 94 days of being smoke free I feel like I have faced the same level of difficulty but I won then and I am winning now.
Thanks for all the help I get here!!
