I didn’t have to go into work until later in the morning because I am evening manager today. After I dropped off my daughter at school I went to the store, bought a pack of cigarettes and drove back to the house, smelly smoke dancing out the window of my car and rain splashing in. When I’m not smoking I usually have the window of my car rolled up when it’s raining. I mean, I love the smell of the rain, the look of the rain and it’s nice to feel it accidentally hit my lip or my forehead.. I love it when it rains! After a few minutes, the rain splashing in the window of my car, bouncing off the door and trying to adjust my head properly so I can dodge the drops that are splatting into my eye and off the side of my head gets kindof annoying though.
So I got home and proceeded to sit outside my front door, in the rain no less, smoking. When you don’t smoke, you don’t sit out in the rain, you open the door and look at the rain, breath in the smell of the rain, feel the mist on your face and then you shut the door and that’s what I was thinking to myself this morning while sitting on the concrete of the patio at my front door watching the lightening crashing to the ground. Not that sitting in the rain is a bad thing, because it isn’t exactly, so long as you don’t mind getting all wet that is. I couldn’t see myself as my neighbor or a passerby might, but I had this mental image of myself sitting there as I have just described and I thought to myself what an asshole I must look like.
When you smoke you learn to appreciate the quiet sounds of nature that go on around you. I guess because you are out there, and the sounds are out there and your smoking and what else are you going to do while you pollute your body than to listen. Especially when you are getting rained on. I was standing next to the outdoor trash can taking my last drag so I could throw out my evidence before going in to shower. I stuffed my butts into the cellophane wrapper from the cigarette pack and intended to burry them deep into the can somewhere that wouldn’t catch the eye of one of my kids in passing.. or hopefully not be seen if the can blows over again. (Because I never smoke just one cigarette)
I thought to myself how ridiculous it was that I was smoking. My gum wasn’t bad was it? No. I was doing just fine. JUST FINE! And I was thinking to myself how straight retarded it is that for these last couple of days that I have been smoking I have been telling myself that I have permission to do so… I can now .. we are… but it wasn’t ever that I couldn’t before. Why did I tell myself that? I didn’t need permission to smoke, what I needed was not to do it, to eliminate it from my vocabulary and my way of thinking because my way of thinking was sick and it was going to make me sick. Like a woman with a sickness in little conversations with myself I let it be ok. I let it seem like a privilege to me because that’s what I do when I’m smoking. This is why alchoholics shouldn’t drink again and gamblers have to stay away from the casino and every other kind of addiction is supposed to never do it again, it’s because it is all too easy to do again. So simple to slip right back into the same habits, traits and thinking because it doesn’t go away any more than the idea that I could do it just for a minute does. It all stays right there burned into your skin and your skull. As soon as I’m smoking, then smoking is what I’m thinking about, when I’m going to do it again, if I have enough and when I’m going to do it again. It's actually amazing just how quickly that whole line of thought falls right back in place for me! When I’m not smoking I think repetitive thoughts too but not about just one single activity. I really don't. When I smoke it is as if my whole life revolves around this one thing. While I was sitting on the cement I kept thinking that I could be in the house doing a load of laundry, I should already be in the shower… I have to move that green chair. It would all take a few minutes and I’d be back on track with my morning but here I am just sitting here smoking and not feeling the least bit motivated to do anything In fact my thoughts even seemed a little hazy.
And then I feel bad. I feel so bad about it mentally not to mention that I can feel a headache coming on, my throat sort of hurts along with my ears, not a lot, just a little and come to think of it my stomach feels a little queasy. When I’m not smoking I never choose to do anything that makes me feel even slightly not good. I’m a pussy. I don’t feel bad because I am smoking but I feel bad because I was really pleased with myself and I was pleased for the right reasons rather than any silly reason I can come up with to feel ok about smoking again. I accomplished something that I really meant to do. Undone.
My kids are really proud of me and if they saw me standing there by the trash can they would be hurt because they would have back that nagging little fear that I’m going to die from this and that I lied and I would somehow seem smaller. What sort of example do I give my children when I do not stay strong with myself. Do I give them the impression that it is somehow ok to let yourself off the hook? Maybe with little things and things are jsut the way they are.. but when it's important, important to your future, such as this? Would I not tell them in the same instance that it is all a state of mind? I would, I know I would because it’s the truth. I robbed myself of what I was proud of by undoing it. Because a thing is only done so long as it IS. On the same note, there is no reason in the world why I cannot consider this past couple of days a mere error, a small smear easily erased and go right back my gum and not smoking and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. While I can, before I have been fully submerged again and have to struggle all over again. And today, I really don’t have to struggle, nor any other day, because it’s truly much harder to stick with something I know is wrong, for me.
I’ll just leave this here to remind me before the next time I tell myself it won’t really matter… because everything does.
