Posted by Michael Mishallo on 8/2/2009, 8:08 am
70.20.69.15
As I said in my previous post – “After 30 years of Closet Smoking, I am pulling the plug” — I am committed to quitting smoking.
I have to.
I cannot live like this anymore, it is counterproductive to me reaching my life's goals.
I just finished four years of undergrad and am starting graduate school in the fall. My future career choice is in the social work field working with families and communities. I do care about people and our society - it's not ALL about me!
I attempted to quit a few weeks ago, but the stress of the intense class I was taking just took me over the edge ---> Statistics and Probability, ARGH! I needed to smoke so badly by day four that it was detracting from being able to study. Imagine going nuts for a cigarette and the having to concentrate and struggle to understand statistics.
Now my class is over and I can stop smoking without THAT making it even harder!
I have been closet smoking for 30+ years, since I was a teenager, and at 46 yrs old I think that smoking might be holding my personal growth and development back --- partially due to the connection to when I was a kid of 14.
As an example, here's what I mean:
When I was a kid I used to smoke outside around the back of my parents house, or I used to smoke out the back door with the fan on to draw the smoke out.
I still do this.
Now, I take a walk around the block instead of going behind the house.
I also, even as I write this, am smoking in front of a fan [turned outward, of course] in my office window --- my wife is out of town for a week.
I feel like doing these things is taking me back - emotionally and psychologically - to when I was a kid sneaking cigarettes.
As well, how can I really be effective and powerful and really kick ass on behalf of humanity (as a social work professional) when underneath I have this life-altering SECRET buried inside of me?
One of my biggest problems – and this I share with very few people - is that regarding my future career as a professional (I have always had blue collar jobs over my lifetime so far), I feel like a kid who is pretending to be an adult.
...like I have never completely moved on and let go of my past, especially with regard to hiding my smoking from EVERYONE.
I know that something as seemingly inconsequential as smoking is NOT going to ACTUALLY stop me from entering new career field and being able to succeed, of course. It’s just that the more I dwell on the "cost" of my smoking, the more I wonder if at the bottom of it all, when you really come down to it, inside I am still a kid hiding my smoking from everyone, and this is inwardly stopping me from truly maturing and taking on BEING A FULL ADULT!
Also, the guilt of this is killing me. I have hidden this pleasure/habit for over thirty years, most of my life.
My question is this:
• Is it ME, and am I just making this all up? The whole tie-in from being a naughty and 'bad' kid and the thoughts and feelings I have associated with this 'misery'?!? Is it plausible that emotionally and mentally my smoking secret is undermining my maturation and development as an adult?
(sometimes I feel like the ‘real person’ is the closet smoker with the HUGE secret – the ‘phony’ is the person who finally is getting a college education and acts like he is going to go out there and work to improve society)
Friends, I am not here looking for therapy, nor do I expect to figure it all out through the Closet Smokers Message Board, but F#*K, if there is anywhere where I might be able to find others with similar dilemmas and issues, this is the place, right?
Can anyone relate to this and/or share your thoughts with me?
Have any of you come up against similar issues?
Thanks, Michael 
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