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.