Day 50
smoking
When my kids were younger, eight or nine, we lived in a shitty apartment in Northeast Portland. I was recently divorced, going to Portland State, fighting with my ex about everything, and trying to figure out how to be single again, while parenting. I was relatively broke, obviously pretty down on myself, and trying to convince my kids that their recently exploded life was not entirely my fault. This was a period of my life when smoking felt really good.
I’ve never had tendencies toward addiction, so I was able to smoke just a few cigarettes at a time, then none for days, then maybe one more here and there. I remember this particular afternoon, standing on my concrete porch that was about five by five and faced a parking lot, taking a long drag from an American Spirit and thinking that the burning sensation in my lungs felt so good. I thought about how self-destruction sometimes feels empowering when you feel like all the pain is being inflicted on you by others. It’s odd, but it made perfect sense at the time.
I think about this when I watch my sister and brothers, my daughter and nieces and some of my friends while they smoke. I think about how we process pain, how we develop habits, how we learn. I think about my grandfathers smoking cigarettes in tanks and trenches during WWII, and my grandmothers maybe taking a drag in a restaurant, missing the husbands they barely knew.
