Beemouse Laboratories

Smoking!

O cigarettes! How I hate you for your mind-blowing addictiveness!

I am quitting now, for real this time, as a present to myself for my 30th year. I recently read David Sedaris’ “When You Are Engulfed In Flames,” where Sedaris talks about his decision to quit. He mentions hearing a non-native English speaker saying that someone had “finished with his smoking,” and talks about how appropriate the phrase sounds– as if there is some random allotted lifetime limit for a person, who has now reached his maximum, and thus is Finished With His Smoking. I like the expression too. Even though fear and vanity are my motivators (I decided that I don’t want to be a thirty-something smoker), I can pretend the reason I am quitting is that I have just reached my allotted limit. An arbitrary number is much more benign an adversary than Death, Infirmity, or Vanity.

Ah, Jessie? No no, she does not smoke. She has… how do you say?– she has finished with her smoking.

The weird thing about quitting is that I don’t smoke that much, and I don’t smoke regularly. It gives the illusion that maybe I don’t even smoke at all! If I smoke 20 cigarettes a week for 4 months out of the year, that’s 0.88 cigarettes a day. See, that’s not possible! That doesn’t even make sense! Ha! I don’t smoke!

Okay, so maybe I do smoke. Regardless. I hate how I can not smoke for months, and then something stressful happens or it gets sunny (seriously, sun is a trigger? How lame is that?), and then oh, it’s puff puff puff! Hey look, I have a cold now! Puff puff puff! But it doesn’t matter because my nicotine receptors are like ohhhhhh yeah this is the best ever, how about you wake up a little earlier because you want to have your morning cigarette? Yeah, this is quality living! Ow, my larynx.

So, I am educating myself about quitting, and I set the date (April 6th (THIS year)), and I actually do expect that I will quit permanently.

I remember back in the day, when I first considered quitting (as in really never even bumming a cigarette again; as in, even if my cat dies, I will not turn to cigarettes), the idea was frightening and alarming, something that normal people in first-world countries should never have to go through. And actually, now that I have been thinking about cigarettes for more than 15 minutes solid, it still seems alarming. Maybe writing about quitting is not good for quitting itself.

Here’s a photo in case you didn’t want to have to read any of the above:

March, 2009