It's Friday, GUSsacks and friends! I hope everybody's doing well and hanging in there as best as they can. Yay to the GUSsacks who have been on this journey with me!
1BQ
amk for obama
bgblcklab1
blue husky
bsmechanic
coppercelt
flumptytail
gchaucer2
Im a frayed knot
interceptor7
khloemi
LarsThorwald
magicsister
MinervainNH
nannyboz
ncsuLAN
Pennsylvanian
sallycat
seenaymah
smartcookienyc
Vacationland
Wood Dragon
Our Diary List:
smartcookienyc: Friday 5pm edt/2 pdt
bgblcklab: Saturday 9am edt/6 pdt
Vacationland: Saturday 7:30PM edt/4:30 pdt
gchaucer2: Sunday 9PM edt/6 pst
For prev. diary entries go here
And now some emo to go with your (smoke-free) coffee...
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When I began smoking I was an angsty sixteen-year-old punk girl, nihilistic and self-destructive as only an artist-type person who takes herself and her "art pain" very, very seriously can be. And perhaps that attitude never really left me, in a way.
However, when reality slaps you in the face, you realize that maybe being in a hospital bed for the sake of art pain really isn't such a fabulous idea after all.
I'd quit smoking here and there over the last twenty-three years, but it never seemed to stick--maybe it's partly because I never really imagined anything happening to me health-wise, despite all the data out there relating smoking to cancer, heart disease, et cetera, and despite the fact that I have major heart disease history on both sides of my family (both grandfathers died of heart attacks, my dad had open-heart surgery, etc).
Actually it was never really heart disease I was afraid of for some reason, nor emphysema--what really freaked me out was cancer, especially throat or mouth cancer where you had to have a hole in your throat to talk or had to have your jaw removed or something. Though in truth I always thought if it ever got to that I'd just drive off a bridge or something, no worries.
Well, like I said, reality has a way of slapping you across the face sometimes, and that reality intruded on me last Sunday when I woke up with a horrible pain in my lungs.
The night before I had stayed up late working on a short story, and doing what I call "binge-smoking" as I wrote--normally, I smoke no more than five cigarettes a day, but when I'm in my creative mode I can easily go through a pack within a couple hours (!). However, never have I ever experienced the kind of lung pain as I had the next morning, so that every breath sent a twinge through the core of my chest, and you know, it scared the hell out of me.
However, I'm happy to say that, since last Sunday afternoon after I smoked the last three cigarettes I had in my pack, the pain has disappeared entirely--perhaps it was just what someone I knew had once described as "smoker's brick-in-chest" from overdoing it; whatever it was, the truth is that I hope I continue to remember that sensation, because it really sent the message home to me that yes, in reality, I do actually care whether or not I get cancer, because I really don't want to have to drive off a bridge or something, or even worse (to me), get stuck with huge medical expenses that would bankrupt me and my family.
No way. To hell with that.
But it's not just the cavalier attitude regarding my health that has kept me from quitting all these years; another reason--and perhaps the main reason-- why I have continued to smoke for twenty-three years has to do with what I am doing now, which is writing this diary.
For most of my life, I associated smoking with all the creative or "think-y" things I've done: painting and drawing when I was in my teens and early twenties, studying during college after I went back to school, then grad school--and all throughout it, writing, whether it be journal entries in my (real-life) diaries, research papers, or fiction--it didn't matter what it was, really, except that my cigarette was always there to feed the rush that I experienced from creating something, the exhilaration I received when I re-read what I thought (heh) was a particularly clever passage, or as I contemplated the brush strokes of, say, the portrait I was painting, or even just mulling over a particularly difficult research problem--whatever it was, I always had that breath of nicotine to feed my creative process, and after 23 years the process and the nicotine had become so entwined with each other that I hardly knew how I could possibly perform the former, without the latter.
I believe it is one of the primary reasons why it has been so hard for me to quit--for the three years I was able to give up cigarettes, I did not draw, and I did no creative writing, and it seemed I was able to do little research-wise, except plain old benchwork, which was okay because you can't smoke in a laboratory anyway.....
And so, in a way, my being able to sit here and write this diary without the aid of a cigarette is something of an accomplishment for me. For so long I thought I would rather have a shortened but creative life--would rather smoke and die early, than have a life without writing, or art, or the visitation of the Muse. I don't crave the tangible things, you know: I don't have much money, I drive a very old and beat-up car, I own very little, save for what I've inherited from my grandma, back in 1993. And so the world within my mind is my palace, my castle, one whose incense has heretofore been the smoke of a cigarette's faithful burning, which I'd always equated with the very burning of inspiration.
Till now.
Thanks for letting me wax emo here, you guys. It's nice to know I can still do so without the smokes, which is probably why this diary is way longer than it needed to be--just got carried away I guess. Sowwy. :)
gchaucer2 mentioned last night the possibility of sub-diaries, where we talk about what we do to keep busy now that we're quitting smoking (or becoming non-smokers as it were). What projects would you like to dedicate to your new non-smoking life? Some of you here sew/quilt/knit, others are handy with painting and carpentry and machines, all of us, I'm sure, have fun or creative things we've wanted to do but have put off for this reason or that. I think for me it's sitting down and finishing the damn book I started writing almost four years ago, or if I can't do that, begin the one that's been floating around in my head for the last year. Ironic if my quitting smoking is the impetus for me to actually finish the stupid novel I want to write, no? :)