Life goes on

One year after my wife died, I quit smoking because it was simply impossible to breathe normally. After quitting, I got better fast. I gained more weight, my legs and arms got thicker. My face looked better. I must have looked handsome too because women told me I looked great and even one woman hit on me. But I felt lonely during all the time. I felt miserable. 

Here is an irony. When I felt the most miserable inside, I looked my best on the outside. After one year from quitting smoking, I resumed smoking. It was when I met my high school friends. Listening to their stories about their normal life made me realize what I lost and without a second thought, I found myself smoking again. 

And it was like that since that time. I am still smoking though I lost more than 5 kilograms and look terrible everyday. I always decide not to smoke and any trigger - an image of a happy couple, a memory of my wife and me together, even a passing thought about my lonely death in the future - can make me pick up another cigarette and light it. 

I try to meet a woman through various channels like online dating sites, meetup sites, and so on. Whatever I do, I don't find a good woman but just realize that I have become a too old dog to play a new trick. As a commodity, my cycle is already over in the market. 

In the course of trying to find a woman that I can relate to, I simply lost my old and quiet self. I need to go back to my old life style where I just sit alone home, not smoking, sipping wine every night, playing the ukulele, listening to Mozart. At least I would not feel miserable and wasted and degraded like I do these days. A loneliness with dignity. That is what I need to get back.