Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

I am a smoker.

I don't really feel the need to apologize for this. In fact, I would like an apology from every person who has gone out of their way to let me know what an asshole I am for personally ruining all of the air. Especially the ones that, regardless of my attempts to contort out of their path, make an effort to walk as close to me as possible while fake coughing and sending hate bullets into my face with their eyes. 

Even so, being a smoker is not something I am necessarily thrilled about.

I fondly look back on the days when I claimed I was just a social smoker and it was true. That ship has sailed so far that I can't remember the last time I actually said that.

I find myself waffling about the whole to quit or not to quit thing. I want to quit. Obviously it isn't that easy. What I really want is to get in a time machine and never start smoking in the first place. Then my present self would have no idea of the euphoria she was missing out on. Science should work on making that happen.

I also don't want to become one of those evangelical Former Smokers. I see this bit of the world split into four major groups:

1. Non-Smokers
2. People Who Smoke and Feel Guilty
3. People Who Smoke and Truly Don't Give a Fuck
4. People Who Have Quit Smoking.  

I find that a lot of people in that last category believe that, because they have quit smoking, they are better than the poor chumps shelling out money to feed an addiction that, to many people, is more abhorrent than clubbing baby seals. They are so much better that, if they spit on us from their pedestals, their spittle of condescension would likely freeze in the atmosphere and kill us from the velocity accrued on the long, long journey down.
I don't want to become one of those people.

But I certainly fall into the People Who Smoke and Feel Guilty category. I don't think I'm cool because I smoke. I don't think it makes me edgy or sexy or whatever people think people who smoke think about themselves. I just feel bad about it and kind of embarrassed that I thought I was somehow immune to getting addicted. Most of my guilt is actually fear because I have a morbidly unhealthy relationship with the idea of mortality. I occasionally dip my toe in the Gotta Die of Something pool and run away screaming.

Obviously the best part of this film.

But there is some true guilt.

Some of the actual guilt is financial. Some family history. Some is just the recognition that what I am doing is pretty stupid. At the same time, I have been a smoker for almost four years now, and it feels almost like a piece of my identity. My irrational brain almost believes that if I quit smoking I will have no sense of humor and no friends. This is, hopefully, not true. My personality is not built on a platform of Marlboro Lights. I was who I am before I started. There is no reason I won't be the same me, only crankier, when I quit.


It is always scary to talk to people who have quit smoking and claim to miss it every second of every day of their lives. Lord knows I don't need that kind of nagging distraction. But those are the good people. The people who admit that they miss it. As the second most addictive chemical substance out there, I think anybody who claims to miss nothing about being a smoker is a liar and trying to make me feel bad about myself because I haven't had a cigarette in 20 minutes and I already miss it.

So I guess all I am trying to say is I'd like to quit smoking and I'd like to miss it.