Most people who smoke want to stop. Many try repeatedly before they succeed.
Smoking was my small yet very satisfying declaration of war. Against the people who didn’t love me the way they were supposed to. Against a childhood that didn’t look like other kids’. But most of all, I was declaring war against myself. After all, no one can kill you if you beat them to it.
By that point, smoking had come to serve many purposes depending on the day: social crutch, stress reliever, identity scaffolding, hobby, appetite suppressant, emotional support object, shield, sword. With each deep, satisfying drag I was still fighting the good fight—against whom exactly it was no longer clear.
I agreed to climb Mt. Fuji with my brand-new group of outdoorsy friends—this, even though I had not exercised in my entire life. Also, I had never hiked. Being clueless did help in some ways. I was not the least bit nervous when we finally set out to climb on the eve of my 21st birthday. How hard could it be?
Especially when you do the whole thing in the borderline reckless fashion of college kids. We set out at the end of September, the very end of climbing season. And while I did have borrowed hiking boots and five cotton turtlenecks, I didn’t have any of the proper, necessary gear like a parka. We set out far too late, which meant we would summit at sunset in temperatures cold enough that my camera froze. The wind was so strong that the smallest among us were almost blown off our feet.
I’d love to say I descended Mt. Fuji and immediately quit smoking, seized the day and lived happily ever after. Regrettably, it wasn’t that simple or that quick. But that day, it was like an invisible door had popped open. Just a crack. Enough to let the light in.
In the same spirit of adventure, I signed up for the New York City Marathon with the plan of becoming the kind of person who did such things and who did not smoke. After all, I’d once been a person who had never climbed a mountain. The sheer terror of marathon training certainly kept me off cigarettes for a solid six months. It also turned me into a runner.
Through it all, quitting smoking is one of the hardest things I have ever done. And I have done my share of hard things. It took several, white-knuckled tries to get it right, even once I had become a person who very much wanted to quit. But being that person first was, for me, the most important part.
Each one of those endeavors has given me belief in myself, usually at times in my life when things have felt hopelessly off-course. When I’ve desperately needed to be reminded of what hope feels like.
In doing so, that first mountain and the hope it brought set me free.
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