A habit is, at its most basic level, the repetition of a behavior until it becomes part of the architecture of our everyday lives. In that sense, addiction can begin almost innocently: something we repeat until we no longer remember what life felt like without it. For more than twenty years, I repeated one habit that, looking back, seems almost absurd: smoking cigarettes. I learned it by watching my mother. We often hear about children who grow up watching adults smoke, imitate the behavior, and eventually normalize it. Well, I was one of those children. But was it entirely my mother’s fault? Absolutely not. I watched her smoke throughout my childhood, but I was the one who eventually chose to take the next step.
When I was twelve, I started taking a couple of cigarettes from my mother’s pack without telling her. She smoked more than a pack a day, so she barely noticed. There was also the peculiar familiarity that comes from growing up in a household where smoking is part of the environment. The smell, the smoke, the whole atmosphere becomes so ordinary that you stop questioning it. Adolescence, meanwhile, is an extraordinarily strange period of transformation. One summer you are still playing with your childhood toys, and the next you are staying out late with friends, discovering a version of yourself that seems completely unrelated to the child you were a few months earlier. It is easy, from the distance of adulthood, to judge that child. But I don't think life works that neatly.
And yes, I know how easy it is to point a finger. I grew up with strict parenting, traditional Christian values, and a deeply conservative moral framework. But I also remember something an old university professor once told me: regardless of the social, economic, or political circumstances we come from, we are not isolated islands. We interact with other people every day, and those interactions inevitably shape us. Cigarettes became intertwined with friendships that, in some cases, have lasted to this day. Some of my happiest memories happened with smoking somewhere in the background. I am not romanticizing something that is undeniably harmful to health. What I am trying to understand is something more psychological: quitting is not only about breaking a chemical dependence. It is also about separating yourself from the memories, rituals, social moments, and temporary sense of reward that your mind has attached to the habit for years. Sometimes, you are not simply giving up a cigarette. You are giving up a version of yourself that became familiar through it.
Physically, deciding to quit was one of the best decisions I made. I was no longer feeling well, I am a mother, and I would hate for my daughter to ever pick up the habit simply because she had watched me do it. My health matters to me. And yet, on December 31, 2025, while celebrating the arrival of the new year with my boyfriend, I experienced something that surprised me. We had music playing, we were drinking wine, and we were together, welcoming another year. Suddenly, I remembered cigarettes. The physical symptoms I had once associated with smoking had disappeared months earlier, but the memory of the reward was still there. That was the strange part. My body had moved on faster than my mind. The desire was no longer really about nicotine. It was about memory, association, and the old promise that a cigarette could somehow make a moment feel more complete.
I think there are certain pleasures that will always be negotiations with ourselves. In my thirties, I became more conscious of pleasure, self-reward, and the simple things that make life feel worth inhabiting. For most of my life, I had been too concerned with what other people thought, constantly denying myself things I wanted or felt I deserved. Cigarettes had been a faithful, destructive companion throughout much of that journey. I don't miss what they did to my body, and I certainly don't miss being dependent on them. What I sometimes miss is the person I was when I believed I needed them. And perhaps that is the deeper lesson here: sometimes the most genuine act of self-love is choosing something difficult precisely because it protects the person you are becoming. Five months ago, I decided that cigarettes were no longer going to be part of my life. Five months later, that decision still stands. And for once, a habit has been replaced by something much more difficult to build: trust in myself.
