Because I know I have to quit smoking. I quit a number of times, and I really do detest the nasty habit. Honestly, I do. Smokers don't look glamorous anymore-I sure don't. All that shame and hiding from others-using that nasty Febreeze, so I traipse around smelling like fabric softener with a touch of smoke in my hair and clothes.
So I keep chewing.
I remember the first time I smoked-I was 14-and I wanted to be cool. I got so dizzy I almost passed out. The only other time I ever had that buzzed feeling, in my entire life-actually, was when I went without food for two days.
Smoke in my lungs, no food-something like a shaman ritual, I suppose.
After my first smoke, no one really cared at my house-I used to go across the street to the gas station on the corner of Belsey and Davison Road and buy smokes for 50 cents a pack. Yeah, that was a long time ago.
I remember buying cigarettes for my mom, as a kid. She would send me with a note to the drugstore.
We lived in downtown Detroit, near Harper Hospital. I 'd pass the emergency room on my way to the store, listening to the sirens glaring into the emergency entrance.
At the time, ambulance noises , loud, high pitched sirens developed into a comforting sound to me. Do you remember the comforting sounds from your home, when you were a kid?
Well, ambulance noises-one of mine.
Gratiot Avenue was a huge eight lane road for a little five year old kid with a note.
My mom smoked non-filter cigarettes-Chesterfields-or Pall Mall. I don't think anyone makes those anymore, do they?
The clerk would read the note, hand me the smokes and take the money.
nowadays my mom would get arrested for that kind of behavior. Then it was no big deal.
I would buy my smokes and hide in the restroom at the gas station to smoke them. At fourteen, smoking was kind of a sneaky thing to do-so it was cool to hide and smoke.
Later, we didn't care. We'd smoke wherever we wanted. No law existed-if kids wanted to kill themselves on smokes, well, it was one less mouth..
Anyway-whoever heard of a teenager dying of lung cancer?
We had enough problems in Flint with all the pollution. I don't think smoking made much difference.
I quit many times over the years. The longest for five years. What made me pick up another one -how can I answer that question?
I don't think smokers like to admit what it really means.
Smoking just shuts down all kinds of emotional minefields.
Angry? Just pick up that smoke and inhale all of those feelings.
Lonely? Sad? Depressed? Feel empty?
Just breathe and hold that cigarette. Kind of makes it all sit in the pit of the stomach.
I don't want to quit anymore because of "peer pressure".
Or the fact everything in my house stinks-including my daughter's hair.
Well, that is one reason.
Now, I want to quit because I want to live longer.
Sure, I could get hit by a huge truck or some crazy driver.
A huge meteor could fall out of the sky and smash me flat, too.
But denial is what keeps many smokers picking up the next one-
It feels naked without one. Like I am showing a body part I prefer to keep private.
A friend of mine quit smoking twenty years ago. One day he said, "I still feel it sometimes. Like what am I supposed to do with my fingers? Stick them up my nose??"
I keep chewing this gum as fast as I can.
Maybe this oral substitution can keep the words in my mouth, the feelings stuck in my throat, and the nakedness-the raw nakedness of feeling so exposed, will reveal what the rest of my body and mind have been stifling for so long.
