Tuesday, October 21, 2003  

8 Days, Shot to Hell

Two things are very, very clear to me:

1. I have a textbook addictive personality.
2. Camel Lights taste so goddamn good.

I was good. I was so good. After Ross's bachelor party, I re-affirmed my desire to not be a smoker. I felt like shit. My mouth tasted like I'd felched a baboon. I felt like an idiot for pissing away 5 years of being quit. So I re-quit!

Until right now. Jeniphir left to go see Eddie Izzard (her new favorite comic...bumping me down another notch on the list), and there I was, on the back porch, fucking Joe Camel all over again. I swear, my relationship with tobacco is almost sexual. I'm treating cigarettes like I always thought I'd treat old girlfriends from high school: gee, baby, it's been a long time, and we shouldn't do this, but god, I want it so bad! Only instead of making out with Carol Gesling (who I assume isn't ever going to read this) in a seedy motel room during a trip back to Colorado (p.s. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED), I'm sneaking off to rendezvous with my worst bad habit, and one that I'd thought was long behind me.

Mostly, I think it's because my day job sucks ass, and I don't have any other coping mechanisms (choking the living shit out of various professors at Harvard Law School being deemed an inappropriate method of coping). Of course, that kind of rationalization is typical for junkies. If only, if only, if only.

On the one hand, I could never, ever go back to a pack-a-day habit. Jeniphir would kill me much faster than lung cancer. On the other hand, that means I can only get away with enough smoking to feel like a weak dickhead.

It would be much more dignified to just stay quit, because really, there's no reason not to. It's been long enough that I don't have chemical dependency to blame. It's all me. Me and my lack of impulse control (p.s. that's also the name of my CD, which I wish someone out there would buy! I promise not to spend the dough on smokes).

So if you know me, and I see you, and I try to bum a smoke, for the love of Christ, TELL ME NO. Then look the other way, because I don't want you to see me cry. I think that's from a Chicago song....do you SEE how pathetic cigarettes make me?

Also...if you have a job available, that'd help, too.

And in non-tobacco related news, I have a screen test on Friday for a new version of This Old House. Fuck, my life is weird.