It’s a day and a day, and perhaps there is too much oxygen, and perhaps there is too much nicotine floating in the air around the great Manuel’s Tavern, Highland Avenue, and tonight (and today for that matter) has proven to be, so far, the hardest of the days so far, and I wanted a cigarette after teaching that class, even though I am “great” and “the guru,” and even now as I type this I cannot believe that I cannot step onto the porch and have a cigarette. I rub very hard, with fingernails, on the nicotine transdermal patch on on my left shoulder. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on and I think I may need one, and I may need one just because I am not in bed yet, and before I read that book, and that movie is on which I left G at home for last year and she called me back from and told me she was leaving this house and R told me it was better that I didn’t see it (worst moment in cinematic history), that it was better that she called me home to tell me she was leaving here and me. Can I have a cigarette? Should I suffer this movie in the two ways that I will suffer it? I think I should cash it in for the night – pillow turned long – a prayer and a page and lights out and a new tomorrow where I will not want to pay the retainer to RJ...
I have officially been longer without a cigarette now than I have since my feeble attempt at quitting 8 years ago. In about an hour and a half, I will have made it for my first 24 hours. Despite the anticipation that I had of how hard this first day would be, it was not very hard. I expect that things will get harder along the way though. Today I had no real cravings. No freakouts because I was going through withdrawal or anything like that. It was just those times of the day, like when you get a task finished at work and are not yet ready to start the next one, a little break would do, a cigarette break, but then I would have to remind myself that that is not possible. Or when I was rebooting the computer this afternoon and thought it would be a good time to have a…. or when the TV dinner is cooking in the microwave… It wasn’t that I craved the cigarette, it was just those periods of downtime that I used to fill with smoking. I am glad I resisted the urge, but I cannot say that it did not make me sad. Just like the last one last night made me shed a tear or two. It really is like breaking up with a lover, splitting ways from a friend. Things I have discovered today is that yes, I am craving food more, and that the box of 100 Pop Ice popsicles I bought 3 years ago indeed have a purpose other than delighting the occasional child in...
I am sitting here and I guess it is technically the day that I will quit smoking. I am staring at a pack of Winston Light cigarettes and there is one remaining. I will be going to bed soon, but before that, I will have that last cigarette. When I wake up, there will be no cigarettes in the house. There will be a box of nicotine transdermal patches, 21 mg, the highest grade. I have been trying all day not to romanticize this moment, but those of you who know me, know that it is impossible for me not to romanticize anything. I guess I have thought so many times about how the last cigarette would be. I have thought about who I would like to have it with. Would it be JT, or R, or G… I guess the fight that I am entering into will ultimately be mine to fight, and the addiction that I have developed is my burden, so I guess it is only appropriate that this last cigarette be something that I have on my own as well. I think I may go get it over with...
It is 6 PM on this Friday afternoon and I have just finished the last cigarette that I will ever smoke in front of the AJC offices here at 72 Marietta Street. I am not quitting my job here at the newspaper, rather I have decided to quit smoking. On this Sunday night, some time before bed, I will have my last cigarette, and when I awake in the morning I will not smoke the morning cigarette, or the one on the way to work, or the one after lunch. I will not smoke another cigarette again. My friends who have done this tell me of how hard it is going to be, and I imagine I have not even fully realized what I will go through yet, but I am looking for the relief from the burden of smoking. Hell yes I enjoy it. Every cigarette I have ever had has been good – a consistency that I wish other aspects of my life could achieve. However, it is a burden: the trips to the store, the counting of the dollars when the debit card is damaged, the planning my day out in cigarette demarcated spoonfuls. People tell me that I must find something to take the cigarettes place. G ate carrots, my dad chews gum and exercises. I think I will exercise and write. I will write my way through this thing because writing is what has gotten me through the bad times in the last year. If it can get me through that, it can get me through this. If I can get through all of...
You are my heart. You are my joy. I wish you would come back into my chest, my body, my soul. You were my biggest fan and I pissed on it. Not that I thought I could find better, but perhaps because I did not think I deserved it that good. Did you know I was your biggest fan too? I don’t want to feel half passion, half love, half desire anymore. I want to feel what I had with you. The only person I still feel it with is you. Broken pieces and all, you and I are much better people than the average person I have met in these days since “you and I.” You burn inside me now with a flame as large as there ever was. It brightens my days, but makes my nights sometimes more lonely. I want you beside me every night, for the rest of my life. I want you there at the end of the day. I want your sweet voice singing me to sleep when the confusion overtakes me. I will muster what voice I have to calm you too. I will sing lullabies nightly if needed. I swear, G, I want this more than anything possible in this...
The last month plays like a dream now. I am not sure where the things to touch are and what parts I have simply conjured. Robert and Chicago and Asheville and Tom Waits. As Robert said on the way to the airport, it is hard to believe that we actually saw him. That we were in the same room. I cannot even remember all of the details now, it is just a bright ambient light, a sense of warmth, yet still like a dream. I thought it could not be topped until Saturday night. I don’t romanticize our evening. I don’t think it necessarily means something concrete. It’s was comfortable, and relaxed and old in that good way. I had forgotten how you felt in my arms. How it felt for you to be holding me. I forgot how well we sleep together. I don’t think I have slept that well in a while. I have dreamt of that night many times in the last year. I wondered would I ever be back in that bed, under that comforter, sidled beside you. In the sense that it happened it was the realization of those dreams, and thus dreamlike too. I do hope it wasn’t the last time. I can’t believe right now that it is. I could spend my life sleeping beside...
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