2 days after vowing to quit, an update.

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I was quite amazed at the number of responses I received to my discussion on my determination to quit smoking. That discussion really should have been posted in this category, but I plum forgot about it. So, here's a run down of my situation: I have been an on and off smoker since I was 18, right around the time I left home. Back then, smokes were cheap and they were a good distraction from every day life, especially for me where I was at in my life. Even after finally getting settled down, I continued to smoke. I was hooked and had no support around to quit even if I wanted to. Then I got pregnant. But I still didn't quit, but I cut down drastically, so I know that was better than nothing. Since then, I've never smoked as much, although I still continued with the habit. Every time something turned my life upside down, I would continue on with the habit, even if I had quit. In 2003, that was the first time I tried to quit. I was living in a shelter, most of the women there were smokers, and that made it quite difficult to quit. But somehow I did, and I moved out of the shelter, on my own, smoke free for a while. It didn't last though, and before long, I was at it again. I moved out of the city, away from the stress and quit again. Fast forward to 2010 when I had quit yet again. It wasn't to last as a stressor had set it off again. We'd found a cat in May, and by July 2nd, she was dead. That did it for me, and I started again. Now it's 2011, and I quit yet again, I don't remember how many times I've tried to quit over the years, but I know it's quite a few. This is my second full day being smoke free and I'm feeling it. I have been since yesterday. My biggest problem is finding something to distract me, and unfortunately, food has been my biggest distraction. I hate that, because I'm eating nothing but junk food, and I'm trying to lose weight in the process. The physical aspect of withdrawal has been difficult to say the least, I haven't been able to breathe properly as my lungs try to clear out all the junk in them, they are inflamed, and that gets to be quite painful. My heart races, I guess my blood is trying to get used to not having garbage in its system that it has to clear out. The cravings so far today don't seem as bad as they were yesterday, but then again, I've only been up for a couple of hours, so I don't know how the rest of the day will go. I was all set the other day to go get another pack of smokes and do a gradual cut-down instead of going cold turkey, but then I realized that it might not work, especially when I'm at work and can have a smoke pretty much any time I want to. So I decided not to, I was going to stick to my guns and quit, no matter how hard it was going to be. So now, I guess I'll just take it one day at a time, it's really the only thing I can do, one step at a time, and pray that I can be strong and keep with it.