I had my first cigarette when I was
thirteen. Awkwardly perching on an uneven brick fence, at a party with no
alcohol. My friend asks if I want one and I play it cool by accepting
nonchalantly. There isn’t any sense of pressure, no one is even paying
attention to me. I’ve just always considered smoking a cool thing to do. I suck
on it without even really knowing what I’m doing, the smoke clouds my mouth and
I blow it out without inhaling. I catch the eye of an older fourteen year old
boy wearing a camo hoodie and tracksuit pants (to a party? I don’t know why
either.) This boy, named something dumb like Mark, would later be my boyfriend
for a whole week, before he would dump me for a hotter, better version of
myself that I would often be compared to. Except she is much more exotic
because she tells people that she is a bisexual and I all I have is back acne.
Anyway, my relationship with cigarettes is on and off for the next nine years. I am currently in an off period, but in that stage of a relationship where you find them genuinely repulsive, confused as to why you would ever let them inside of you. But also in danger of going back to them when drunk.
Up until now, I just didn’t really care. Hearing the cautionary tales, I would react in a mixture of “don’t fucking tell me what I can or can’t do with my body” and also “I laugh in the face of mortality.” And again, I just didn’t really think about it. I like the feeling of the smoke flowing through my lungs and making my head feel a little lighter. The warnings simply floated around my brain and then out my breath with the rest of the smoke from the cigarette.
I had a realisation today. I think the reason I started smoking and kept smoking, in dramatic irony; if I didn't smoke, I wasn’t really living. I know that my father has never smoked a cigarette; he’s just never seen a reason why. “It’s expensive” he would say, indirectly addressing that he has found a deck of cigarettes hidden in my room for the 3rd time. I thought in a way, the fact that my dad has never smoked a cigarette means he’s missing out on something. All the rock stars do it. And he doesn’t. Therefore he is a square - duh.
I smoked because it meant I was alive and living life to the fullest. That’s genuinely what I thought. However, eventually I realised mid acid trip as I was huffing and wheezing my way to self actualization, every cigarette is doing you damage. (TM Australian Government Anti-Smoking Adverts) Not only in the way of physical damage to your health, but every time I put a cigarette in my mouth I’m closer to death. I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and will address later, but in summary: once I am dead, I am dead. I am just an unconscious orb of energy floating through the universe. If I so happened to die before my parents, that would literally destroy them. If I died from something easily preventable like not smoking a pack of cigarettes in one night in the Rev’s smokers, I would be so god damn mad at myself.
Smoking is selfish. Because after you die, the ones you love are left to live on with the grief of your death, long after you manifest into something else. With that knowledge, if I died because I smoked too many cigarettes, I’m not doing harm to myself. I’m doing harm to my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, my imaginary future children. They will be the ones there to clean up after my preventable demise because once upon a time I thought smoking made me feel alive.
Anyway, my relationship with cigarettes is on and off for the next nine years. I am currently in an off period, but in that stage of a relationship where you find them genuinely repulsive, confused as to why you would ever let them inside of you. But also in danger of going back to them when drunk.
Up until now, I just didn’t really care. Hearing the cautionary tales, I would react in a mixture of “don’t fucking tell me what I can or can’t do with my body” and also “I laugh in the face of mortality.” And again, I just didn’t really think about it. I like the feeling of the smoke flowing through my lungs and making my head feel a little lighter. The warnings simply floated around my brain and then out my breath with the rest of the smoke from the cigarette.
I had a realisation today. I think the reason I started smoking and kept smoking, in dramatic irony; if I didn't smoke, I wasn’t really living. I know that my father has never smoked a cigarette; he’s just never seen a reason why. “It’s expensive” he would say, indirectly addressing that he has found a deck of cigarettes hidden in my room for the 3rd time. I thought in a way, the fact that my dad has never smoked a cigarette means he’s missing out on something. All the rock stars do it. And he doesn’t. Therefore he is a square - duh.
I smoked because it meant I was alive and living life to the fullest. That’s genuinely what I thought. However, eventually I realised mid acid trip as I was huffing and wheezing my way to self actualization, every cigarette is doing you damage. (TM Australian Government Anti-Smoking Adverts) Not only in the way of physical damage to your health, but every time I put a cigarette in my mouth I’m closer to death. I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and will address later, but in summary: once I am dead, I am dead. I am just an unconscious orb of energy floating through the universe. If I so happened to die before my parents, that would literally destroy them. If I died from something easily preventable like not smoking a pack of cigarettes in one night in the Rev’s smokers, I would be so god damn mad at myself.
Smoking is selfish. Because after you die, the ones you love are left to live on with the grief of your death, long after you manifest into something else. With that knowledge, if I died because I smoked too many cigarettes, I’m not doing harm to myself. I’m doing harm to my parents, my boyfriend, my friends, my family, my imaginary future children. They will be the ones there to clean up after my preventable demise because once upon a time I thought smoking made me feel alive.
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