Quitting smoking is hard, everyone knows that. But everyone also knows that it is bad for your health and often times leads to an early and/or painful death. So I decided after 35 years of smoking to quit.
Of course I needed to quit. It had been suggested by doctors for several years. I had high cholesterol, arterial heart disease, shortness of breath, stomach problems and I had had a small stroke. But none of these very real threats to my health caused me to decide to quit.
I quit out of a sense of love and responsibility towards my 17-year-old son. Having already lost his Father at a young age. It suddenly dawned on me how unfair I was being potentially shortening my own life. Didn’t I want to be there for him. Help him, guide him, support him? I mean didn’t I want to see him graduate college, get married, have kids, be successful. Yes. Didn’t I want to revel in the love of my grandchildren? I did… so I stopped.
I really struggled with the loss of my cigarettes…really. I went into a deep depression. I was anxious, angry, I couldn’t sleep, I gained weight and I was constantly jonesing for the nicotine long after the physical need had passed. I screamed at everyone. I ranted and raved. I was a total bitch, and believe me I did not need any help in that department because I already had been proven to be a “REAL” bitch.
So I should not have been surprised about the comment I came across on my son’s computer screen. A confession to a friend that his mother was a real bitch, always screaming at everyone, getting upset. Yelling at him etc. What I was surprised at was that despite my herculean efforts to show my son how much I loved him every day, my actions, my words, my personality made him feel bad about himself. He felt I was putting him down, blowing him off, not very caring of his feelings. Yes, of this I was shocked. Shocked and hurt and sad…so, so, sad. I really wanted to smoke a cigarette, oh and drink way too much, oh and maybe run away for a while and even maybe kill myself.
Because these few words set me to thinking about myself and all my other relationships as well. What everyone else must think of me.
Now I was under no delusion that I was “sweet”.
I’ve hoed a tough road, made my own way, worked hard and pulled myself up by the bootstraps more times than I care to remember in life, and I am aware that my personality reflects that. But I have my moments. I am fun, sometimes funny, caring, super generous, forgiving and empathetic and solicitous of people’s feelings. I am this sometimes with everyone but mostly I reserve my “good” moments for my son. Trying to brush aside my fatigue, anguish and irritation in order to enjoy our time together. But I guess I had not been very successful in that. Or conveying to him just how much I loved him, how much I cared, how I would go to the ends of the earth to make him happy. How amazing I thought he was and how eternally proud of him I was. No I had failed.
In the hours that followed coming across his comment I became aware as well of just how many times I had failed with other people, not just my son. Actually as the picture emerged it became clear that NOBODY actually “liked” me. So what the hell was I quitting smoking for. Why was I depriving myself? To live longer for the people that hated me. To continue torturing them with my presence in the world. Jesus that is hateful…so I lit a cigarette and cracked a beer and let lose the floodgates of my inner sorrow. Yes, as I took those first drags, I felt right, I felt relief, I felt this…this is your salvation, your fast track to death, get it over with you loser and enjoy the fucking ride.
Puff by puff I rationalized my decision. I started with my long suffering partner in life and in business. He fucking hated me. In the last years it had really come apparent. Frequent fights, carnal straying’s, snarled lips and cruel looks. Sometimes it was behind my back and sometimes right to my face. I knew how much he despised me. My decisions, my bossiness, my arrogance, my ability to make him feel like shit with just a one liner. While I was lashing out at what I perceived to be his lack of love for me, I was actually causing him to hate me even more. Despite everything I provided him with, all I added to his life, my loving of him unconditionally. It was all apparently all lost in my delivery. Or maybe he just didn’t like me.
So that covered the two people I spent most of my days with. But also my staff hated me, I did not have many friends in our town, business colleagues disliked me, vendors, grocery clerks, purveyors, were all “afraid” of me. And that power was no longer funny to me. There were several places I could no longer go, because I had made some kind of a scene related to their bad service. Yes, it was true… my reputation did precede me.
My siblings, hmm… that was a big one. At 50 some years old. I was on the outs with all of them. The eldest, after years of being the protector, the provider, the confidant it seems they to hated me. Found me brash, bossy and unlikable. This is not the time to go into all the little things I felt they did to me to tarnish our relationships; the reality apparently was that it was not everyone else… my son had confirmed it…it was me. And it took that, my own blood stating that for me to see it. I took another drag. Even my dead brother who had been my soulmate had not apparently liked me, or so I was told after his death by his bitter ex-wife. But was she bitter? Maybe it was true. Maybe he had talked about me behind my back and not enjoyed my company. All those years of banter had only been a banal ruse, to pass the time while he endured my presence.
Only days ago, during a severe nicotine craving I had launched into my own two-hour rave against myself in the mirror, about what a loser I was. How nothing had ever worked out for me. How I refused to give up and give in to the fact that maybe I was destined to just be a loser. How I had no friends, no close family how my own mother had hated me just because I was born when she was only 18 and ruined her life. Well maybe that wasn’t it, maybe I ruined her life just by being me. Maybe she had never been bitter…maybe just straight from the womb I had been unbearable, unlovable. Yes, that must have been it. I lit another cigarette.
Smoke rings like halos over my thoughts, the room dense with exhaled residue and my brain fogged with alcohol it was all coming clear now. It was me not them…
Thankyou nicotine for clearing that up. Thankyou cigarettes for hastening the end… and to the rest of you that have been poisoned over the years by my venom I am sorry, sorry I could not have smoked more and put you out of your misery or the misery of me… sooner.
P.S. JOEY-
it’s just a story, just a moment in a day, that made me feel a certain way. I know you loved me then and you love me still today.