Tuesday

It was either Wednesday or Thursday last week that I told him I couldn't do this anymore. I asked him to please let me go because I could no longer endure his uncertainty. He told me to listen to him, and instead of screaming in a fury of pain, I did. I realized I had never actually listened before, I realized I was the one who needed to let him go. When I hung up the phone for the last time, I realized I was relieved.

On Friday I received his birthday letter to me in the mail. Beautiful words floated down like a dream. I wondered about the person who had written them, and then I cried so hard I started laughing. On Sunday he called me, but I did not pick up. I listened to his message, but did not call him back. It is becoming easier to not think about him.

I think he is hurting very deeply right now, and his emotional confusion stems from a sense of instability. I think I sort of understand. I know you've seen me through all the ups, downs, and temporary insanity of this, but only now am I beginning to feel closure...and the strength to move on. I will never say never because I've learned far better than that, but I know that right now, without a doubt, this is the right way to go.

Today I bought a pack of cigarettes, sat on the curb, and wrote.

Well, I'm smoking again. Recent stressful events have driven me back into those Nicotine clutches.

I remember when I first started smoking. On my eighteenth birthday I snuck out of school during lunchtime to the nearest gas station, and bought my first pack of smokes - Marlboro Lights. I remember that I didn't tear the foil out because I didn't know that's what you're supposed to do, but I did know to pack them because that's what I'd seen in an anti-drug commercial.

It was exciting to flip open the carton and slide a cigarette out, and I had one very favorite lighter in my favorite color with stickers on it. I used to creep off campus to drive and smoke, feeling like such a grown-up with one arm out the driver's side window. I'd return to campus fiercely protective of my secret, but unashamed of potentially smelling like smoke.

Dragging on a cigarette, I pretended to engage in some very important, very private thought. But mostly I was just hoping that my parents wouldn't find out.

In college all of my friends smoked, and when I started going out, smoking was just part of the ritual. Pretty soon the habit caught up with my asthma and my allergies, and I'd get so sick that quitting was easy. The first time I told myself I'd stop after a pack of free Camels from a club. By the last cigarette, smoking had become unbearable.

I'd clear up, go months without a symptom, then crash into some excuse, and find myself at the drugstore counter showing the clerk my I.D.. I'd tear out the foil and strike a match out of the complimentary book, my favorite lighter long since lost. Now any light will do.

My choice is American Spirits, for their slow contemplative burn. But when they aren't available, I'll pick Parliament Lights - which always taste like booze to me because that's what my best girlfriend would smoke when we went out.

It's a cycle of beginning and quitting, and swearing one day it's going to be forever.

But I know that day is never coming.

Writing Jan 13 2009