embarrassment, college habit

My age is 27, I am an Indian girl. I started smoking when I was doing my post graduation in Delhi. My ‘cool friend’ from Delhi University asked me to try one for fun. I didn’t know how to smoke and neither did she, as I can understand now :P anyways I smoked occasionally for two years without actually knowing how to smoke. One day one male friend pointed out I was doing it all wrong. he taught me the ‘art of smoking’ by inhaling the smoke and exhaling through nose. It kicked me bad! I loved that feeling and after that day I had no looking back. I started buying cigarettes from my scholarship money. Since my university had banned selling of cigarettes in campus vicinity, I had to walk till the main gate to get cigarettes. One thing I never got over in this whole process was the embarrassment. I always tried to get over with this embarrassment when people look at you while you smoke by pretending to be unaffected. I used to fight this feeling my saying that people are being judgemental about me because I am a girl. The truth was I didn’t care why they were judging me because all this while I was judging myself. I can’t really say whether I would have felt same if I were a guy but I knew how much I hate when kids see me smoking. I was embarrassed even when my dogs saw me smoking. I had to decide for my own self, I knew it’s affecting my personality and confidence badly. And as they say, ‘if you don’t want people to know then stop doing it’, quitting smoking is the only way I could stop this embarrassment. So I decided to quit and quit cold turkey. Today is my first day of quitting. I hereby declare on this webpage, smoking is the filthiest of habits of human kind and I am quitting being part of it. I quit! For the love of a healthy, natural, happy, confident life, I quit !