..just BAM and the smoke smells way to good.

The smell of cigarette smoke is doing me in.

My main question is: why now?  Why now am I feeling so vulnerable when faced with the urge to smoke.  The urge that for months has been completely absent and is now rearing it’s alluring inviting enticing ugly head?  Before all I had to do was remind myself how hard it was so stop, the health benefits – both immediate (ability to breath) and future (life itself),how unfair it was to keep smoking after my finance quit, how much I wanted to do this for my father.  Once I reminded myself of these things the desire to smoke would vanish instantaneously.  Now as I sit here I find myself wondering what all the fuss was about.  I miss it.

The funny thing is that I have always been really firm in my commitments to stop something.  Too firm at times perhaps.  It has gone so far as to take on a defining quality.  I AM that person who is strong willed, hard headed, and stubborn.  Who can set her mind to anything (self control wise) and just do it.  Once I concede that it’s time to give something up – well that’s it – done, finito, gone.  But therein lies the problem.

I have become so internally defined with my ability to limit and restrict that I can’t stop.  I have come to thrive on (or rather suffer from) my personal, epic battles of will power.

But now I am left asking: in constantly ’taking away’ from myself with goals of raising my own personal bar, what am I going to be left with?  Life is slowly but surely loosing the fun, the carefree, the enjoyable.  I actually once considered myself SPONTANEOUS.  Where have those days gone?  According to the records I am only 21 years old after all.

Can you understand how unsettling it is to have such urges to smoke?  If I were to give in to such an urge, where would the cycle lead me?  How would I define myself?  How would others’ view of me change?  If I started smoking again and told myself that if I quit once I could do it again – what would stop me from starting everything else I have stopped with the same justification.  What would stop me from winding up back in my car, family and friendless, with drugs as my sole desired companion.  Drugs and words anyway.  I have always believed a saying I once heard, something that has always stuck with me: The first time you try to quit, it’s easy. [ I take that to mean relatively so - in other words, don't throw away your one 'free-pass'.  Not that it is exactly 'easy' the first time, but I sure as hell don't want to know what the non-easy subsequent tries are like.]

I am leading this refined and sifted life that I (non-religiously) imposed upon myself.  For me it has always been all or nothing.  Entirely ‘out there’ or entirely ’here’.  Entirely absent or entirely present.  For some reason there is no give and take in me – it’s entirely give or entirely take.

Why the sudden insecurities?  Nothing bad, nothing troubling, no real bout of depressive thoughts – just BAM and the smoke smells way to good.   

   

It’s that time again

Ah, the first week of class.  Always an interesting compilation of intriguing class introductions, and the equally interesting albeit strenuous period of the teachers’ culling of the herds. 

Oh so you want to take my class with three times the approved limit of students crammed into every nook and cranny, every space against the wall occupied by another laptop carting body.  Well that shouldn’t be a problem, just read this over the weekend.

The funny part about it is that next week in class the teachers are going to have this funny look in their eyes when they pose easy questions to their audiences and receive only sleepy, befuddled stares in response.  We are asked to go into this zombie mode to have even a remote chance of completing the work they assign the first week – and then they inevitably wonder why we are not exactly on point by the time we finish such a gauntlet and walk through their doors.  For that matter, exactly how much coffee would you like me to drink trying to finish all this?  I happen to have given up all other, more effective and destructive, stimulants long ago.  You want me to read faster?  Well, I refuse.  I read how I read and it suits me.  I think about things, go off on tangents, pull out corollaries and points of interest, and fill the margins with a large percentage of what occurs to me as I read the text.  To me, this IS reading.  Anything else would be merely glazing over.  I want to digest what I read. 

I think, in part, this compulsion to break down what I read is a common delusion of mine that I can get anything done in one pass.  The same operation can be seen in so many little things I do:

Yes, I can make it out of the car (while locking the doors), across the street, and over to my apartment – with a couple hundred dollars of grocery bags cutting into my arms (and wrists and fingertips) – and still manage to get out my key and open the door.  Why?  Well two (or five or six) trips would be silly… 

Yes, I can burn off over a thousand calories at the gym (or so the ‘trustworthy’ machines tell me) – practically killing myself for hours on end so that walking back to my car I look like an individual who is quite certainly missing her cane – because going several times a week for a reasonable amount of time and pain would (once again) be silly…

So where does this leave me?  Slightly bitter about being assigned more than is reasonable, but hey, I like the challenge.  I will read everything assigned.  I will read them as thoroughly as if I had several weeks to finish them at my leisure (which ironically would most likely lead to my becoming distracted and therefore reading less of them).  I may be a little run down, but come next week I will be fully functioning as I make it into class.  And, importantly, during all this I will not drop off the face of the earth from all friends, family, and blog associations.

An Endless Production

So I sit here mindlessly waisting time as I push the ’scroll-to-the-next-random-blog-button’ over and over again. Why? Probably because I have a ton to read by tomorrow and an essay I really should be working on.  What’s driving me nuts right now is not the reading or the essay.  Well, I guess it is the reading – the blog reading – that’s getting to me.  As I click from one site to the next I am searching for something – anything really.  I just want to read something that is a part of the person who wrote it.  I want to read some insightful observation or a blatant honesty that will remind me of the vulnerability of the AA meetings I used to attend.  I want to read something that will make the day feel real.  Apparently, this will not be happening.  It feels like I am reading the same nonsense – or sense rather – over and over again.  Give me pain and struggle – but not of the everyday variety.  Give me something that hurts and feels real. 

 Have you ever had that moment when you are in a phone conversation, telling the other person something, and you realize that the responses you are getting are fake?  Filler or auto responses.  You hear the ‘un-huh’, ‘oh yeah…’, ’sure’s’.  Suddenly you realize that it all is a sort of production.  Your telling them something – their listening.  Why?  As I read through random blogs it is gradually dawning on me that they are all essentially the same.  Filler or auto blogs.  People writing because they haven’t said anything for a few days and they feel obligated to do so.  I guess this is okay, who am I to judge?  It just doesn’t make anything feel real…

The need to pause

I quit smoking on December 14, 2007.

 A couple months smoke free and I still feel the pull.  I will be the first to admit to the relatively short time it has been.  What they say, for the most part, is true.  The first week is the hardest (getting over the hurdle of nicotine cravings and addictions cold turkey…), then it eases up a bit with the occasional intense desire spurred on from long practiced habits, such as lighting up the moment you get in the car for the long drive home or seeking an escape from a stressful situation.

It’s not the smoking itself that I miss.  It’s the solitude, the quiet, the pause from life.  It’s going out on the patio at five or six in the morning – breathing in the biting cold air – feeling a somehow comforting detachment from the rush, the hustle and bustle of things – taking a moment to breath and think about life’s bigger picture.

 This is what I miss about smoking.  It’s un-replicable.  I’ve tried.  I’ve tried going outside or opening the windows when I drive in the car and it’s never the same.  Always too cold to be worth the effort or otherwise too inconvenient.

I crave these pauses in my day and it’s learning to function without them that is where the difficulty lies.

comments…

For some reason I have been a bit of a comment junkie of late.  Something to do with not wanting to deal with the minor details of my life – I have been scrolling through the blogs of others looking for ways to offer encouragement, hope, or anything I have to offer.  To me, it seems to have all the hallmark signs of an avoidance tactic.  [Don't deal with your own things, try to help someone else deal with there's...]

For better or for worse:

I came across a blog (online journal entry) in which a mother was desperate about her young son and his psychotic behavior.  (He had just decided to get married for the 2nd time..baby from 1st marriage at her house..misc details…).  The details are not important.  What I did want to share with you is the message I sent her – hoping to offer some glimmer of hope.  Her name, by the way, is Andrea as well.

“Andrea to Andrea. While I can only imagine what you are going through, I have been in the position of your son. I have abandoned everything and everyone close to me in the pursuit of “love” and drugs. I hurt so many people – but what kills me inside is how my parents would look at me. How they would look at me when I slept through Father’s Day and the anniversary of my brother’s death. How I could take all the love, support, and friendship I have always had with them and throw it down the drain.
The reason I am telling you this is because today I have that amazing relationship with my parents – and everyone else I truly care for – back. It has, and will always be, a long road to regain their love and trust. I speak with my mother daily and have moved back to within 5 mins. driving distance because in truth, she is my best friend. While I am still with the same “love” that I was back then, we no longer enable each other to do anything except relearn how to live soberly and responsibly. My parents, who at one point despised him so vehemently, have seen in him a ‘fine’ young man and one who has moved mountains as far as they are concerned. [In so much as how he has changed and is caring, responsible, respecting, etc.].
I don’t know that this will ever happen with your son. I have not read through all your posts to glean every little detail I can. What I want you to know is that it is possible. I once heard that ‘people never change.’ Well then maybe C and I haven’t changed. We have only found who we once were. Who we were before each of us, in our own way, got off track.
Good luck in life. Sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, Andrea.”

 I posted this because there is always hope and always individuals in need of hearing it exists…

Introspective Danger

The only things that seem consistent in life are the inconsistencies.  I get that.  I get that we are all searching to define ourselves in a world that doesn’t seem to enable any true definition to exist.  Nothing can be explained, nothing remains explainable save the futility of this attempt and the essential inconsistency of an existence that is entirely subjective and fleeting.

What I don’t get you ask?  I don’t get how everyone continues on with this knowledge – or non-knowledge if you will – how everyone is able to continue on as if nothing had changed.  As if realizing this, or accepting it, doesn’t change you.  Okay, so lets see, supposedly everyone knows this and nobody cares.  Lets Proceed.

I can hear it already.  You want to offer up some cliche.  Something along the lines of – ‘Everything is meaningless,’ ‘All you have is today,’ ‘Enjoy life and live every moment like its your last.’  Let me tell you – none of that means anything.  A while back I spent a full year of my life [no breaks to come up for air, no imposing reality, all alone in a discussion with my stream of consciousness] living out of my car because I was living, breathing, and at times making methamphetamine(speed) – all mind you, in the pursuit of some greater ideology.  I wasn’t screwing up I was, ahem, ”experiencing life,” I was, “living as if I was dying,” I was – and actually told myself repeatedly – “conducting a psychological/societal experiment – placing myself in the role of an objective observer who must assimilate herself into a different culture to more fully understand”. [You see I didn't have those 'causes' that you hear others speak about - I had an amazing, fortunate childhood with supportive and loving parents.  I did well in school. I simply glimpsed a world I didn't know existed and became obsessed with the desire to know and understand that of which I was (and despite it all, still am) ignorant of]. 

I spent a good while doing this, writing down anything and everything I thought of along the way – and what did I end up with?

 After shedding my ‘assumed’ role of druggie, attempting to regain and rebuild what I felt should constitute my life – what was I left with?  What lasting impression or grain of wisdom have I discerned – - – that people will do just about anything to escape their present reality.  My usual justification was that I needed to remain “fucked up” (a term I use in an almost endering  sense) in order for me to pass from this reality into the rabbit hole of a new, alternate meaning – and my ultimate goal?  To arrive at the other side, to see past all the confusion.  To find an answer.  I have spent my whole life questioning – and I was sure this was the way to an answer.

 Was it?  Who knows.  I have a tendency to block out, skim over, and plain forget memories that do not coincide with my present sense of self.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?) what I gained in shedding my assumed role and re-learning to live sober is my complete and utter loss of self.  My sense of self – of who I am – is now only as strong as a passing whim or a breeze upon the arm.  Its fleeting to say the least.  I said ‘after shedding my assumed role’.  I lied.  Yes I shed the role of a drug user, along with various other labels I have acquired during my life, but the only sense of reality, the only role I have is one of assumption.

At times it’s entertaining.  When I am alone I look at other female (girls, women?) passing by me as if I am flipping through the pages of a catalogue.  This ones too tall, too blonde – not that one she seems – get this – too self-concerned and involved. Ha! What a hypocrite. I’m ridiculous.  Believe me, I am more than well aware yet find myself unable to do a damn thing about it.

 The only things I am sure about:

I am not religious, yet I have always had and continue to have an incredibly strong sense of morality.  I do what is right. Why, I have no idea…I used to consider myself as moral but wavering on a ledge between what I believed to be good and bad.  Now I am just moral, there’s no denying it.  I always want to do what I consider to be the right thing. I think it must have something to do with all the people I hurt through my using.  I will always feel a sense of being in debt to to my family for their continued support and love  – and perhaps providing me an avenue to find my way back through the fog to life.

There is this hidden bravado, cockiness - that smirk in your eye –  that always sneaks its way back up to the surface of my personality.  While it tends to be short lived it is truly addictive and returns when and where it decides.  It’s as if this sense of myself know something and finds the whole of everything to be just a bit funny. 

 [As a side note: reading Luigi Pirandello's One, No One & One Hundred Thousand is adding fuel to a fire I normally try my best to push into the darkness and cram into a closet.]