travelling life through nicotine

I relapsed into smoking recently. Well, relapsing makes it sound like a disease. My control of five months crumbled under two weeks of intense emotional pressure. And it's been less than 24 hours after the end of my last pack, and I'm sitting here contemplating how to justify easing back into a smoke free life instead of just going back to not smoking like I was three weeks ago.

I first tried smoking when I was in high school. It was on holiday with some kids a few years older than me that I'd been friends with for a few years. They offered me a rollie, and being the badass that I was I accepted. I’d already tried drinking with them the year before, so why not smoking this year. I was open to life.

This turned into me being someone who smoked as part of my identity. I may have not been popular at school, but at least I could cultivate a mystique about myself that gave me social status beyond my middling normalcy. I wasn’t 'gross' by smoking on the regular, not like those wannabes who smoked in school uniform outside the school gates. I was cool. I'd smoke in town drinking coffee with people from senior college. I'd smoke at parties sipping red wine. I was a cool smoker. Part of the in group. I was above you, I hung out with older, more sophisticated people. And I did sophisticated things.

I stopped for a year or two when I was beginning university and the extreme emotional demands from my now ex-boyfriend were not worth me continuing. He told me stories about his mother coughing up blood and how he never wanted me to leave him. It led to me having the ambulance called when I deeply craved nicotine and smoked weed instead. Although I didn't smoke, wanting that part of my identity back was a constant little voice at the back of my head. But I was a good girlfriend.

When we broke up, I started again as a fuck you to my ex and to re-cultivate the cool image I desired. I started smoking regularly with the discovery of the freedom university could give me and the attempt to connect to a boy I liked. I vowed that I would never let anyone try stop me smoking. They could never control me or take that part of my personality away. I was me.

I smoked four cigarettes a day and could only smoke more when out at a party. I would buy a pack on average every five days, with the exception of when my flatmate bought me some from duty free. My smoking became a framework. Something dependable when everything crumbled around me. The boy I had liked decided sure, he wanted me, and so smoking was an escape from him. It was also a way to be with him. It was control.

We broke up and I had freedom, I let myself go. I did what I wanted and smoked up to 6 cigarettes a day. There was no-one to judge what time I had my last cigarette. It was summer, and I could be outside at 11pm at night looking at the stars if I wanted to. I was being sociable and could join smoker’s circles at parties. I bonded with my closest friends. I had confidence.

I then started my honours year at university and I re-connected with a guy I had seen casually before, but hadn’t worked out previously. People stopped smoking and the guy I re-connected with didn’t really like smoking that much. I slowly lost interest and smoked only a few days a week.

My emotional drive to smoke was reduced, until the flat I was living in became too much for me and I felt like I couldn’t escape. For the two weeks until I found someone to replace me, it felt like I would never be able to get rid of the lease on the house. I drank one smoothie in the morning, a soy latte, and multiple cigarettes to keep me alert and to get through the intense workload of my honours and dealing with the underlying feeling of being constantly on-edge. Smoking became a way to cope and a break from the things I was thinking. I was trying to be contained.

But, I got out of there. The constant stress of my honours continued, but when I finished I moved in with the guy I had re-connected with and had now been dating for almost a year. The emotional calm and feeling of safety, coupled with everyone in the flat not smoking made me lose interest in smoking again. I’d smoke once every second day and then only one cigarette. Bar parties that is. Smoking was an annoying thing I’d have to spend 10 minutes doing alone, and then have to shower and brush my teeth. It wasn’t worth it anymore. I had better things.

I quit on the 1^st of January 2016. I made the decision several days beforehand when the day before my birthday I thought ‘what’s the point of me doing this anymore? I have better things’.

Smoking is something that is complex for me. It still is complex, because before my crumble in the face of adversity I did still smoke when I drank. And smoking to me is a way to cope with stress and have time out. When I felt the emotional pressure mounting most recently I started drinking more often so I could justify smoking. But I let the alcohol go, and didn’t judge myself for my action of smoking that had been there for me through the stress. I’m not saying smoking is good, but it’s not really bad either. The reason we do things, especially when it comes to substances that can alter how we feel in some way, is because of emotional response. And smoking as an emotional response for me has changed, and it has evolved over how I wanted to be and how I was. As an action it’s part of me changing.