A letter from ten years free

Ten years from now, the version of you that came through this sits down to write you a short note. Here is roughly what it says. I remember today better than you would expect, though not for the reasons you think I would. I do not remember the craving. I could not tell you what set it off or how long it went on. What I remember is that it was a Tuesday, that I got through it, and that the getting through turned out to be far less dramatic than it felt at the time.

You want me to tell you it was worth it. It was, but not in the way you are picturing it. There was no moment of arrival. No morning where I woke up transformed and knew the thing was finished for good. It simply stopped being a subject I had to think about. The best news I can report is that I do not think about it, and the second best is that the people around me got a different person out of the deal without me ever having to explain myself to them.

I am also, honestly, unimpressed by the drama. You are treating this week as a referendum on your character, and it is not one. It is a Tuesday, and Tuesdays are what I am made of. The days I owe the most to were the ones where nothing interesting happened and I just did not go back. Thank God for those especially, because standing where you are, I could not have told you which ones were the important ones. None of them looked important.

So here is the only instruction I have for you, and it is a plain one. Do today, and do not try to decide about the rest of it. You do not have to feel strong. You do not have to believe in the whole ten years this morning. Get to tonight without smoking, sleep, then do it again tomorrow. I am here because you did that, over and over, on days you were sure did not count. They counted. Signed, you.