The Agony

When you start your first day of quitting, in the morning you will feel very glad about it. You might experience an uneasy feeling once or twice but it does not affect you very much and you start wondering about the great fuss that is made about quitting.

But as the day progresses, the feeling gets worse and it’s almost like a monster raising its fearful head every now and then. If you are chain smoker this feeling becomes terrible as the clock ticks away and by noon time, it becomes almost unbearable.

You start feeling terrible and it is almost as if something has taken possession of your body and mind. You end up feeling so depressed that you begin to think, “What the hell? Who cares a damn about quitting?”

But this is not the worst. The worst is still to come. It is almost as if you are at one end of a tunnel and have started advancing. As you keep moving forward, the darkness of the tunnel engulfs you. You inch forward slowly at first and then at a faster pace. But the tunnel seems endless. There is no end to the darkness. It is so black inside that you can almost walk on the darkness.

There doesn’t seem to even a glimmer of light. To make things worse you lose your sense of direction and do not know whether you are advancing or retreating. Along with that the air starts to get stuffy. You find it increasingly difficult to breathe and before you know it you are gasping for breath.

Every part of your body seems to be tearing itself apart and the feeling is just too much to bear. You cannot identify what exactly the feeling is. It is not pain but yet you feel tormented and tortured. It is sheer agony for you.

It is almost as if someone has got a grip on your throat and is slowly squeezing the very life out of you. To make things worse you start stumbling and have to reach out to steady yourself from falling. You reach out and you feel a hand. It is not a strong supporting hand but a wet, slimy and cold hand that makes you shudder. But you hold on to it to steady yourself.

Then before you know what happened, the hand gives you a tug and sends you whirling around. You try to stop yourself from going round and round but you cannot. The hand keeps on exerting force that you can hardly resist. You feel dizzy and realize that you will hit the floor at any moment. The experience is sheer agony.

You do not want to fall down because you realize to your horror that the tunnel has started filling with water. But then you stop caring. Your agony is so great that you just want to fall down and die. At this moment when you feel that all is lost and you are about to lose your senses, you see a sudden ray of light; the exit of the tunnel.

If only you could get there. If only you could steady yourself. You make one last effort to stop swirling around and to your surprise you stop. But your head is swimming so much that the exit of the tunnel keeps passing in front of your eyes. You topple over and you are on your hands and feet. The water is dangerously close to your head. You literally crawl towards the opening but you just can’t seem to reach there. At last, after what seems like eternity, you reach the opining of the tunnel.

But you are so exhausted with your efforts that you just want to lie where you are with your eyes shut and so that is what you do. You lie there for what seems to be a very long time but in effect is only a couple of hours. And then the feeling seems to disappear almost as fast as it appeared. You mind starts getting clearer and clearer and you find it much easy to breathe.

There is no longer the sound of swirling waters around you. Your hands and feet seem to have lost the numbness that hat hit them. Your breathing becomes more regular and you calm down a lot. But still you do not want to open your eyes, but there is bright light that is beating down on your eyelids which is trying to force them open. Unwillingly you pry your eye lids open a little bit and lie there squinting.