Day 5

How to make a woman you're dating fall in love with you: every night when you go to bed, put a nicotine patch on her arm, and take it off just before she wakes up. That way, she'll always crave being with you, and will likely mistake that for love in the long term. That's what I always tell people when they ask how I got my beautiful wife, although really I did it with charm and perseverance. Or at least perseverance. I would have been quite a bastard if I had done that though, as wearing the patch is not fun, and gives you crazy dreams to boot.

Last night I dreamt I was solving a murder out on a hill billy farm in America, the night before I dreamt I was a falconer, and the night before that I dreamt that my job was just to argue with people all the time. The patch makes me feel fucking weird all day and night, so if I had stuck it to Kathy when she slept, she would as likely gone crazy and murdered me as fell in love with me.

Maybe it's the cheap Boots own brand patches I have opted for this time around, but I really don't remember feeling like this last time I tried out the patch. I feel fucking odd most of the time - I'm emotional to the max and perhaps more indecisive that I have ever been. But then again, both of those sentences are usually true about me.

I went to Ikea with my Mum today, and I wasn't tearing my hair out with family stress after an hour or two like I usually would be. Not constantly needing a cigarette break made the flat pack furniture giant much less of a modern day hell hole too. And not looking forward all day to being able to smoke as much as I want when I got home and away from the judgmental looks of my elderly mother, meant that I could enjoy the moment a lot more. I'm finally feeling the positives of this difficult endeavor it seems. Boo ya!

So as much I have missed the ability to regulate my mood with cancer sticks, I think I must be over the hump now, as my mood seems to not need regulating nearly as often. Or possibly my good mood now is in fact just another massive mood swing which will be reversed again tomorrow. I choose to believe the former, as otherwise, why the fuck am I doing this?

Steve Vs Cigarettes

Day 3

Ok, so the time has come, I miss it now. I'm sick of the rage. I'm sick of the withdrawal symptoms that make no sense, given that I'm self medicating to avoid them. I'm sick of people asking me how it's going, or telling me to stay strong and that I can do it. I'm sick of lying about how hard it is, or joking about how nice it will be when I'm done. Mostly I'm sick of wanting to smoke, all the time, whenever I do anything, or have a free minute, or nothing to do with my hands. What do other people do? Regular, non-smoking, living their lives without a fucking care in the world people. What do they do? I have no fucking clue. I guess I'll have to figure it out.

I woke up full of rage this morning, being awoken by a text message before my alarm as I was. I've been very clear to people that they shouldn't contact me before 8 in the morning, and so even a fraction before that pisses me off something rotten. Usually I would just smoke away the red haze, first thing in the morning in the early light, my smoke mixing with the fog in the streets, or more usually in my mind. I would just spark up and puff puff puff away the anger, until I could see clearly again and be a vaguely reasonable man. I couldn't this morning though, all I could do was stick a square of plastic on my arm and wait for the burning sensation to fade and the vague, partially imagined satisfaction to take hold.

I saw a thing on TV once which said that people who are addicted to caffeine become much perkier after their first brew of the morning, but people who aren't addicted don't really get affected at all, the strength of the thing being in the assumption and need for the effect. I always assumed the same was true of cigarettes  so would laugh at myself and others when claims of the stress relieving effect were proclaimed. What I didn't think of though is that even if it's only imaginary and for the already addicted, at least there is a self regulating mechanism for stress that we could all fall back on. Now I have nothing external to relieve stress, and I miss that, even if it is only a psychosomatic easing of my fury that I've lost.

As much as I think the temperament regulating part of cigarettes is all in my head, that is how I've always used them anyway. Before exams I used to chain smoke to relieve my nervousness. I would tell people it was because I was going to be stuck in a room for an hour or two and wouldn't be able to smoke in there, but really it was because I was shaking inside and out. I never really knew how exams were going to go, as I am never really sure about how much I know about anything. The grade I got on almost every test I ever took read the same "You have done surprisingly well considering you seem to have no basic knowledge of the subject". I've never been one for knowing things, only for figuring them out, and knowing that always put me right on edge before being tested on what I actually retain in my head. I guess I'm lucky that I'm good at figuring things out.

I can't figure out why I'm like this though. Why I need to smoke to feel better about my life. Why I have to be a smoker to have a place in the world. I don't want to have that place, I don't want to rely on something so petty and small to define me, but I made the decision early on that this is who I am, and now I don't have any other ideas.

Ok, so the time has come, I miss it now. I'm sick of the rage. I'm sick of the withdrawal symptoms that make no sense, given that I'm self medicating to avoid them. I'm sick of people asking me how it's going, or telling me to stay strong and that I can do it. I'm sick of lying about how hard it is, or joking about how nice it will be when I'm done. Mostly I'm sick of wanting to smoke, all the time, whenever I do anything, or have a free minute, or nothing to do with my hands. What do other people do? Regular, non-smoking, living their lives without a fucking care in the world people. What do they do? I have no fucking clue. I guess I'll have to figure it out.
I woke up full of rage this morning, being awoken by a text message before my alarm as I was. I've been very clear to people that they shouldn't contact me before 8 in the morning, and so even a fraction before that pisses me off something rotten. Usually I would just smoke away the red haze, first thing in the morning in the early light, my smoke mixing with the fog in the streets, or more usually in my mind. I would just spark up and puff puff puff away the anger, until I could see clearly again and be a vaguely reasonable man. I couldn't this morning though, all I could do was stick a square of plastic on my arm and wait for the burning sensation to fade and the vague, partially imagined satisfaction to take hold.

I saw a thing on TV once which said that people who are addicted to caffeine become much perkier after their first brew of the morning, but people who aren't addicted don't really get affected at all, the strength of the thing being in the assumption and need for the effect. I always assumed the same was true of cigarettes  so would laugh at myself and others when claims of the stress relieving effect were proclaimed. What I didn't think of though is that even if it's only imaginary and for the already addicted, at least there is a self regulating mechanism for stress that we could all fall back on. Now I have nothing external to relieve stress, and I miss that, even if it is only a psychosomatic easing of my fury that I've lost.

As much as I think the temperament regulating part of cigarettes is all in my head, that is how I've always used them anyway. Before exams I used to chain smoke to relieve my nervousness. I would tell people it was because I was going to be stuck in a room for an hour or two and wouldn't be able to smoke in there, but really it was because I was shaking inside and out. I never really knew how exams were going to go, as I am never really sure about how much I know about anything. The grade I got on almost every test I ever took read the same "You have done surprisingly well considering you seem to have no basic knowledge of the subject". I've never been one for knowing things, only for figuring them out, and knowing that always put me right on edge before being tested on what I actually retain in my head. I guess I'm lucky that I'm good at figuring things out.

I can't figure out why I'm like this though. Why I need to smoke to feel better about my life. Why I have to be a smoker to have a place in the world. I don't want to have that place, I don't want to rely on something so petty and small to define me, but I made the decision early on that this is who I am, and now I don't have any other ideas.

Day 2

Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing this alone - I'm no hero. I'm on the patch, and as always the first stage is overkill for me. I used to smoke about 10 a day, but I swear these patches are geared for more like 20, meaning that despite my quitting I'm actually buzzing my tits off on nicotine. It's a strange sensation to be craving something I'm overdosing on, like my rage is expanding and contracting at the same time. Like my brain is calmly screaming FUCK YOU at itself. Fun, fun, motherfucking fun.

I've tried the patch before and it was the thing that worked best for me, so I've gone back for more. I've quit dozens of times over the last 11 years, tried almost every conceivable way, and only the patch has got me to the stage where I was an annoying ex-smoker, the type of guy who  tells  his former outside-the-pub-comrades that what they are doing is stupid, wrong, pointless and maybe even disgusting. I don't remember why I failed to stay clean that time, but I do remember why I quit on my quitting the first time.

I almost died. I was stressing about some teenage post-millenium bullshit, my mind all ablaze with nicotine deprived distraction when I wondered out into the road without looking. That used to be another bad habit of mine, so much so that my friends and family all knew to look out for me and stop me if metal danger was approaching at high speed. It drove my mother somewhat mad with worry, but then perhaps she was just mad anyway.

I remember exactly where I was when it happened, the look of the car, and the driver, the screech of the tires and my heart exploding out of the starting block into a race. Maybe it wasn't that much of a near miss, but it scared the shit out of me. I went straight to the shops and bought a ten pack (as it was going to be a one off, so I didn't want to own too many) and I sat at a bus stop and chained them, trying to calm down. A girl I had fancied for a while happened past, and we talked about why I was smoking. She smoked, and I knew I was back on the ashen trail if it made me look one iota cooler in her eyes.

As always, I doubt that it did, but we did eventually get together, so maybe it helped. She was my first love, so in a way, I suppose, smoking made my life better once upon a time.

I don't miss it though. Not yet. I want it, I crave it, I kinda fucking need it, but I don't miss it. I'm done with that bullshit. At least I fucking hope I am.

Day 1

I'm 29 years old and I've smoked for 18 years. That means I've been smoking for more of my life than I haven't. That means if I had knocked a girl up that first day instead of taking my first drag, that kid would be able to drink by now. Or smoke.

I started smoking casually when I was 11, to rebel, or more likely because of peer pressure. I don't think it ever made me cool, but it made me feel cooler, especially when I was the one other kids came to for cigarettes on underage drunken Friday nights down by the river. I cranked it up to full time when I was 18 for an even stupider reason than peer pressure - so that I could give up something epic for my millennium New Years resolution. Foolish yes, but then I was just like that. In a lot of ways I like to think that I still am.

It was hard at the beginning to start smoking full time - I had to force myself to choke it down whenever an opportunity arose. I set times of day when I would make sure I lit up, to try and create a habit, a routine, a stupid fucking daily need. I had always wanted to feel what it was like to be addicted to something (as a melancholy teen it seemed like the thing to do) but it was not nearly as epic as I imagined. I succeeded in becoming a smoker eventually, and just in time for the biggest party night of my lifetime, but of course I failed in my New Years resolution to give it up again, as I have for many more New Years resolutions since then.

For years I've loved smoking - I used to tell people that it was something I was good at, that I was a born smoker. I smoked 20 Marlboro Reds all at once (bound up in an elastic band) that I found on the floor in Amsterdam when I was 17 to sure up this claim. It of course made me feel intensely sick, but teen bravado (and comedy) made me claim that it was the one Benson and Hedges that had been substituted into the 20 that fucked me up.

I don't love smoking any more though. I don't even understand it. I smoke and smoke and I don't know why. I don't know what I'm getting out of it, or why I'm doing it, and the idea that it's just a habit I can't stop sickens me. The idea that a little paper stick filled with poison has more control over my actions than I do fills me with disappointment and self loathing. So I'm not doing it anymore. Fuck smoking.

Today was day 1. It was hard, and it fucking sucked, but I'm going to do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And hopefully all the days after that. Wish me luck.

An answer to your prayers

I won’t say that I haven’t heard of you, because I have. What I will say however is that I’m afraid I just don’t care about you or your problems. I mean, not really. It might come as a bit of a shock to you, I guess, after everyone down there probably told you that I totally did care, but I really just don’t. You see I made two of you a really long time ago, and I cared about them, but I just can’t bring myself to care about you.

They were my perfect little angels you see, and the three of us used to just hang out and it was frickin’ awesome. We were so close, the three of us, that we didn’t even wear clothes. Seriously! We had such an amazingly awesome relationship that it actually transcended clothing and embarrassment. I made this wicked sweet garden for us to hang out in, put some animals in there, made the day, the night, all that good stuff yada yada and then we just chilled. You know? Like totally relaxed and did NOTHING. Together. It was epic great. But then, after a while, all the usual admin started to build up and I started having to travel back and forward between paradise and the big office in the sky. I mean, being all knowing and omnipresent isn’t easy just because you’re also all powerful, nooooooo. You still have to keep up with all the information flow, keep absorbing it and understanding it, and that took up more and more time as my universe kept expanding and getting more complex. So I had to spend more time in the office, which meant less time with my friends. Not that it’s not epic up there mind you, or that it was much trouble getting to and from work, I just resented not being there all the time. I started to miss out on the start of running jokes, and hearing important news second. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but, when you’ve been hanging out as intensely as I had been with these two, being left out, even a tiny bit, it gets to you man. So I did something a bit silly and decided to bring my work home with me.

So that I didn’t mess with the decor of the garden, I made the information flow like a tree growing fruit, so all I had to do was eat the fruit and voila, I was up to date with all the latest happenings everywhere. Of course I knew it wouldn’t be good if my friends ate the fruit. Oh no, their tiny little brains would probably implode if they knew even a fraction of what I knew for a second. I mean could you handle knowing that the sub-saharan desert is actually.....woah! I almost just gave away a huge secret there! Gotta stop doing that! Seriously, you may have been killed if I hadn’t just stopped myself. Heheh.

Anyway, so the fruit, I didn’t want them eating the fruit. But how hard would that be to arrange? These two were my hardcore besties so I just said, “listen, there is fruit all over this mofo, eat all that, but just not this. This is big boy fruit, for papa beardyman, so just leave it the frick alone.” And that should have been that. But of course it wasn’t.

I remember the day so vividly...I was out doing this art therapy course, and I’d just gotten home and thought I’d take care of a little work before dinner and munch some fruit. I noticed right away that there wasn’t any ripe fruit on the tree, but my first thought was that it must have been a tragic misunderstanding, so I raced to find my friends to make sure they were alright. But when I found those two disloyal little meat bags, they were doing the thing I told them they probably shouldn’t do, because they were kind of genetically related... and they were covered, COVERED, in the juice of the info fruit they had obviously stolen.

So I got mad, and maybe over-reacted, and kicked their sorry butts out. I told them they could never come back, and that what they had done would haunt them forever. Then in my rage, I realised they wouldn’t actually live forever, so I gave them reproductive organs, so the taint could live on through their genetically dubious progeny. And then I sulked.

Yes that right, the lord your God sulked. I was upset ok, really depressed about the whole situation. I tried to stay in the garden and pretend that everything was ok, but it just wasn’t. I started talking to the trees, to the grass, to the other animals, but nothing helped. I even got drunk one night and blamed the whole thing on this one snake, even though I can’t imagine him having had anything to do with it.

Eventually I shut the garden down, and started working from the office again. I tried to look in on my friends a while later, but they were of course long dead. Their progeny were everywhere however, and may I say, were mostly turning out to be massive asshats. So I washed off my ball of mud and tried to start again with just a few of the good ones. It turned out ok for a while I guess, but mostly I was just disappointed with my creations’ creation’s. Even when I intervened in their little lives it made little long term difference to the massive attitude problem I was witnessing.

So, after a while, I just stopped caring. And that, my friend, brings us neatly back to me, and more specifically, you. Ask all you want for playstations or peace, I’m sorry, but I’m just not listening. Ok well I am, I can’t help that, but I am not going to respond. Not unless you’re good. And I mean epicly good.

I won’t say that I haven’t heard of you, because I have. What I will say however is that I’m afraid I just don’t care about you or your problems. I mean, not really. It might come as a bit of a shock to you, I guess, after everyone down there probably told you that I totally did care, but I really just don’t. You see I made two of you a really long time ago, and I cared aboutthem, but I just can’t bring myself to care about you.

They were my perfect little angels you see, and the three of us used to just hang out and it was frickin’ awesome. We were so close, the three of us, that we didn’t even wear clothes. Seriously! We had such an amazingly awesome relationship that it actually transcended clothing and embarrassment. I made this wicked sweet garden for us to hang out in, put some animals in there, made the day, the night, all that good stuff yada yada and then we just chilled. You know? Like totally relaxed and did NOTHING. Together. It was epic great. But then, after a while, all the usual admin started to build up and I started having to travel back and forward between paradise and the big office in the sky. I mean, being all knowing and omnipresent isn’t easy just because you’re also all powerful, nooooooo. You still have to keep up with all the information flow, keep absorbing it and understanding it, and that took up more and more time as my universe kept expanding and getting more complex. So I had to spend more time in the office, which meant less time with my friends. Not that it’s not epic up there mind you, or that it was much trouble getting to and from work, I just resented not being there all the time. I started to miss out on the start of running jokes, and hearing important news second. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but, when you’ve been hanging out as intensely as I had been with these two, being left out, even a tiny bit, it gets to you man. So I did something a bit silly and decided to bring my work home with me.

So that I didn’t mess with the decor of the garden, I made the information flow like a tree growing fruit, so all I had to do was eat the fruit and voila, I was up to date with all the latest happenings everywhere. Of course I knew it wouldn’t be good if my friends ate the fruit. Oh no, their tiny little brains would probably implode if they knew even a fraction of what I knew for a second. I mean could you handle knowing that the sub-saharan desert is actually.....woah! I almost just gave away a huge secret there! Gotta stop doing that! Seriously, you may have been killed if I hadn’t just stopped myself. Heheh.

Anyway, so the fruit, I didn’t want them eating the fruit. But how hard would that be to arrange? These two were my hardcore besties so I just said, “listen, there is fruit all over this mofo, eat all that, but just not this. This is big boy fruit, for papa beardyman, so just leave it the frick alone.” And that should have been that. But of course it wasn’t.

I remember the day so vividly...I was out doing this art therapy course, and I’d just gotten home and thought I’d take care of a little work before dinner and munch some fruit. I noticed right away that there wasn’t any ripe fruit on the tree, but my first thought was that it must have been a tragic misunderstanding, so I raced to find my friends to make sure they were alright. But when I found those two disloyal little meat bags, they were doing the thing I told them they probably shouldn’t do, because they were kind of genetically related... and they were covered, COVERED, in the juice of the info fruit they had obviously stolen.

So I got mad, and maybe over-reacted, and kicked their sorry butts out. I told them they could never come back, and that what they had done would haunt them forever. Then in my rage, I realised they wouldn’t actually live forever, so I gave them reproductive organs, so the taint could live on through their genetically dubious progeny. And then I sulked.

Yes that right, the lord your God sulked. I was upset ok, really depressed about the whole situation. I tried to stay in the garden and pretend that everything was ok, but it just wasn’t. I started talking to the trees, to the grass, to the other animals, but nothing helped. I even got drunk one night and blamed the whole thing on this one snake, even though I can’t imagine him having had anything to do with it.

Eventually I shut the garden down, and started working from the office again. I tried to look in on my friends a while later, but they were of course long dead. Their progeny were everywhere however, and may I say, were mostly turning out to be massive asshats. So I washed off my ball of mud and tried to start again with just a few of the good ones. It turned out ok for a while I guess, but mostly I was just disappointed with my creations’ creation’s. Even when I intervened in their little lives it made little long term difference to the massive attitude problem I was witnessing.

So, after a while, I just stopped caring. And that, my friend, brings us neatly back to me, and more specifically,you. Ask all you want for playstations or peace, I’m sorry, but I’m just not listening. Ok well I am, I can’t help that, but I am not going to respond. Not unless you’re good. And I mean epicly good.