Vice - Smoking: A Love Story

Due to a few stressful events of late, I have found myself once again turning to my old dear friend, cigarettes. Before you turn up your nose in horror and shock that any sane person in this day and age would dare turn to smoking as a way of dealing with anything, should hold their judgment.
Me and smoking have gone a long way back, and it is a love affair that can't just be thrown aside lightly. Smoking is my tortured romance. We were never meant to be, but fit so perfectly together. It is the Christopher to my Lorelai, the Angel to my Buffy, the Sawyer to my Kate (for a network change of pace.)
My love affair has nothing to do with the nicotine, or the habit, the additives, or the fact that the media makes it seem cool. I just like to smoke. I like the way it feels in my hand. I like the smell of a fresh pack when you first open it. I love trying different brands and could wander for hours in a tobacco store.
My favorite time to smoke is outside in the winter. I love it when the air is crisp, and the smoke hovers over and mingles with your foggy breath. At my first real job, I would stand outside the press room of the small newspaper and smoke as the snow fell around me. It was a time to be quiet and write my news stories in my head before I put them into the computer.
I started smoking when I was 14, because I had always wanted to smoke, but had never been ballsy enough to do it before. I knew girls that smoked when they were 11 and 12. Smoking in the bathroom in junior high. I never wanted to be these girls. It was not the allure of the “bad girl” that intrigued me. It was this romanticized idea that I carried with me about how I wanted to be when I was a grown up. Smoking to me was wrapped up in the idea of beatniks, songwriters. vagabonds and artists. I thought smoking would somehow transport me to coffeehouses in large cities and far far away from the farm that I was raised on. These fantasies were as real and important to me as wedding fantasies were to those girls who already had their kids names picked out in junior high. All the DARE programs, cancer warnings and PSAs on how smoking caused cancer was like listening to people tell me to vote when I was 18 or how I should join the ARMY for the GI Bill. I felt like none of it applied to me.
So 14 was when I decided that it was time. I knew a girl who was familiar with all the stores that sold cigarettes to minors. So I asked her to purchase a pack for me. Suddenly she started asking all these questions about what brand I wanted, what flavor, longs or shorts, box or soft pack and I didn't know what to tell her. I told her Marlboro, confident that was the brand I wanted. There was something about the logo and bold colors that attracted and dazzled me. Honestly I wanted the cigarettes made with the brown paper that smelled sweet, but I didn't know what they were called. But as far as flavor, long or shorts, box or soft pack - I developed those preferences later. I just told her to get me the regulars and threw a couple of bucks her way. The next day in band class she passed me a box of Marlboro Reds in a soft pack. I felt so grown up already. I had my very own secret. I told neither of my best friends, just hid the pack in my coat until my parents went to sleep.
My parents always went to sleep so incredibly early, that being sneaky was not difficult. However, they both woke sporadically throughout the night, so I had to be quick about it. I was more scared of getting caught to enjoy my first cigarette, so I can't say it was a moving or magical experience. Mostly, it was something that was mine.
There is this joke on Friends where Chandler is describing what smoking is like so Joey can score this part in this play, and the most apt part of his description was when he said, “It is the thing that has been missing from your hand.” That's what it was like. Suddenly I was complete. I had something to do with my hands. I had a reason to take breaks. I had a reason to talk to other people and a place to go when I wanted to be alone. It was a reason to run up to the store, and something specific to spend my money on. It was the reason to finally turn 18, so I didn't have to hope my friends were working at the gas stations that I frequented.
Now my friends were not always supportive, and my parents got pretty pissed on the few occasions I got busted. I'm pretty sure I have a nasty stomach condition from it, and I had a pretty rough cough for a while. I tried to quit a couple of times before. I tried to quit when I met a wonderful, funny woman who was diagnosed with cancer and only 6 months to live. I bought the gum. That lasted about a week, but I felt really bad about it. I tried to quit when my husband quit. I bought the patch. That too lasted a week. I also felt bad about it. The only thing that ever made me quit and stick with it was when I got pregnant. I smoked up to the moment I discovered I was pregnant. I had been sitting at the Steak and Shake the night before drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette, and told my friend, “So, I am probably pregnant.” Not until I got the little pink like of confirmation on the pee stick did I call it quits. And I missed it every day after.
Occasional I would score a smoke when I was at a party or celebrating something really awesome or lamenting in something really horrible. But I had all these rules set up for myself so I wouldn't start back up again. I wouldn't smoke in the house. I wouldn't smoke in the car. I wouldn't smoke in the work break room. I didn't want it to be a habit again. And although my husband has been incredibly sweet and supportive with my latest slip-up, but I have the guilt. I feel guilty for giving in after fighting the urge to smoke for so long. But how can you fight something that feels so natural. Not good, that's like justifying a sweet tooth. Smoking doesn't feel good. It just feels right. Like something I was supposed to be doing all along, and should do everyday.
Again, please, no judgment. Quitting is harder than anything else I have ever attempted to do. So forgive me if it doesn't happen all at once.