2.23.10 Day 28

my dad used to smoke cigarettes. back when i was much younger and had no idea what was going on in the outside world. nothing outside my little bubble of my house mattered. when im with my family sometimes the topic of smoking comes up and the same old stories are grazed over. there are the times when my two older brothers once took my dad's pack of cigs and threw them outside in the snow. and like any regular smoker, my dad got them from outside, furiously. in a list ditch effort to save them, he put them in the microwave hoping on the off chance that the water would evaporate. sadly no, they were not saved and apparently caught fire...

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i vaguely remember, whenever we threw a party at my house and my ninang and ninong came over, my i would look out the window from my kitchen and see them both smoking outside in our driveway. i thought they looked so cool, talking about who knows what and taking drags of their cigarettes.


now my dad was good about smoking, i dont ever think he smoked too too much, nor did he ever smoke inside. i dont even remember him reeking of smoke either.
on another occasion, he was smoking and let me even take a drag, but me grasping the idea of how smoking worked, just blew into the cigarette and watched the smoke come out the other end.

my father eventually quit smoking when i was still in elementary school. for reasons unknown to me, but better off in the long run, probably because us kids nagged him too much to quit. yet surprisingly enough he quit cold turkey!

fast forward a few years. my first cigarette was after i had gotten lunch with marianne in SW, we went outside and she pulled out a cig and started smoking. which sparked the question, would i ever smoke? and at the time i said i would try it but probably not stay on them. she offered me a drag and i took it. damn did it suck, i was that cliche kid that tried smoking for the first time and coughed like crazy. after she finished her cig i returned home, walking up hill with my bike, short of breath the whole way, not to mention the feeling exhaustion. not a good first experience with a cigarette, i figured if i had done hookah i could do cigs, boy was i wrong...

a couple of months later, i was up late and working in the lounge, laura was working there too. at the time her boyfriend didnt know she was smoking, even though he knew she was smoking weed. i went out on the balcony with her so she wouldnt be lonely smoking. she too offered me a cig and i took it. my first few drags burned, but i took with it, in reality i was actually disappointed that i wasnt blowing out alot of smoke, i thought to myself that maybe i was smoking it wrong, none the less i kept on smoking. as soon as we finished we returned to the table and started on our work. at that point i was pretty buzzed, relaxed and ready to work. i got my work done that night. and for the rest of the week, days leading up to my tests, we saw each other in the lounge and grabbed a cig around 2am. after that week, i thought i was done with them.
thats the story of my first cigarette. thats how it began. little did i know that in the coming months they would reappear. ..

now stress is an interesting topic, especially with me. now im not saying that im special or anything, i think everyone deals with stress in their own individual way. some people eat, some people cry it out, some take it out on others. me? i usually lose my appetite and wont stop working until i can rid myself of the stress if its regarding school, sure my start up time will be a bit longer, but the work WILL get done. and if you read this, its not healthy... i tend to lose weight, again not good seeing as my skinny as fuck. i wish it wasnt that way, but that seems to be how i respond to it. in my head there are different kinds of stress. academic and social, and a few other types but those are the big two.
usually dealing with academic stress jsut causes me to pull an all-nighter, not resting until the job is done, usually finishing the night before something is due (read: last week's essay).
yet social stress is a whole new level, sometimes there arent ways to fix it, sometimes fixing involves giving it time, it takes whoever is involved to come to a mutual agreement, where as with school my work solely relies on me and me alone to finish. there are times when i kristen and i were fighting and i wouldnt know how to deal with stress, causing me great heartache. during the summer one of these stressful moments came up, and i didnt know how to deal with it, i knew my brother smoked and seeing as how cigs back during school were stress relieving, i decided to give them another shot. when i got home, he met me outside and we just lay there, in my driveway, smoking a cigarette and talking. and that was the real beginning. this continued on throughout the summer, sometimes it was with him, sometimes i was alone, but i would always lay out on my porch or driveway looking at the star hoping things would eventually get better. for a while they did, then the didnt, so is the cyclical lifestyle.
i read an article on smoking, there are different types of smokers. not news to me, but what was surprising was that i fit into a few different categories. i was the social smoker, the secret smoker (she didnt know that i smoked on a regular basis, and never really did ) , the emotional smoker, the habitual smoker. and still, even a few months later, i'm in those categories. i hide the fact from my parents, i tried hiding it from my friends, i hid it from my love. yet im only successful from hiding it from my parents, who i think suspect something but ill never know. my friends found out after a few weeks of class, and one of my friends eventually told kristen after we had broken up. i am an emotional smoker because whenever something comes up and makes me feel sad or stressed, my first thought is a cigarette. i am a social smoker for i smoke with my (very) few friends that actually smoke or ill smoke at parties and maybe meet some people. and habitual? i think that ties into the stress, its almost a habit to grab a cig when im feeling like that or after class with my friends.

now overall, there are many reasons why i smoke, everyday someone tells me that i shouldnt, and i know i shouldnt, but i do. im not trying to be defiant. but i have my reasons. i know its bad for me, i know i should quit, i know i will quit eventually. but for now, ill be whatever i am. a smoker perhaps. the first step in quitting is knowing youre an addict right? so heres my first step, and the last step ill take for a while. maybe the winds of fate will change direction and lead me to a different path soon. maybe. just maybe.