Smoking Kills

This morning I started the day all wrong. Over the years, I’ve struggled with smoking cigarettes on and off.  And I started the day with about a gallon of coffee and two cigarettes.  Actually, I’ve had some pretty long periods of “smoker sobriety” but it seems like when I end up in melt-down mode about something, it’s off to the store to by Camel Lights. I’ll probably die of lung cancer. Jeffrey! What a horrible thing to say! Okay, I’m sorry. It’s what I think about though. You know, when I’m smoking. I sit there and draw in the toxic fumes thinking, ” I’m probably going to die of this.”  I hope not. I hope that that last nasty little fucker over there in the pack… all alone, lonely…. is going to be the last one I ever smoke. It’s awful for me. I mean it’s awful for anybody but it’s even awfuller for me now that I’m not 22 anymore. When I was 22 I probably could have smoked a pack and run a marathon. Wait, that’s not true. I was in shit-shape when I was 22. I was immersed in my alcoholism and smoking like a fiend. The only way I could have run anywhere is if I thought the cops were chasing me. Now when I was 32….! When I was 32 I was living in LA, a single gay man doing steroids and obsessed with the gym. I probably didn’t know all the damage I was doing… nah, that’s bullshit too. I just didn’t care. Two years later, when I was 34, I joined the Marine Corps. And I was training for a marathon when   I joined. And smoking. The last thing I did before I left for boot camp was put out a cigarette and say, “Never again.”  But a lot of the other Marines smoked too.  Especially in Iraq.  And I smoked with them.
I’m pretty sure there are a lot of hidden psychological reasons behind it, other than the physical addiction I mean. Well, in truth the physical addiction can’t have anything to do with it when I go after months of not smoking and buy a pack. I have thought about the whole thing. Trust me, I have thought about it. Prayed about it– to have the desire completely removed. It worked for alcohol. Why doesn’t it work for smoking. In the case of the drinking though, I asked to have the obsession removed and then did a WHOLE lot of other footwork.
I don’t want to smoke. I want to be Crossfit. I want to write a lot more before I kick the bucket and if I don’t stop starting again after I stop, I’m going to die of it. Maybe. Waverly smoked like a chimney and died when he was 92. Smoking stuffs my anger. And underneath this genteel Southern exterior is one pissed-off queen. Most everything I hear or read as “news” makes me want to kill someone. To me, it just seems like the whole world is run on greed and that greed is causing immeasurable suffering.  That seems like a good enough reason to commit slow suicide, right?
God, this blog is all over the place. I need a cigarette.
Yuk. That was awful. Last one. I swear.