Dear beloved readers,

I just came home from watching The Little Mermaid the musical and it’s safe to say there are tears, and all of them are from feeling so jealous of the girl who was playing Ariel that I nearly exploded. Truth being told, after not getting that audition callback I was pretty devastated, but this is life and life is just never easy. Sometimes you win, sometimes (often) you lose and the world, unlike what we tend to believe, won’t end because things don’t go as we planned.

From my last week’s post to now a few things changed, regarding friendships and in my head, but if you are wondering if I found the answers I was looking for, sadly no. What is even sadder is the place that I went to look for answers, an old friend of mine, a friend that was by my side more than anyone and who I relied on so much some would even say that this friend was part of me…and I am talking about cigarettes.

Before any judgements, you don’t have to ‘cause I’ve been doing that a lot since last Sunday. The thing is though, I think unless you are a smoker or at least were at some point, you know what those little death cylinders can mean to you. For starters they are great if you want to start a conversation with other smokers, and let’s face it, when you are a smoker, having friends who smoke is always a good thing – you never run out of lighters, you never run out of cigs –; Second of all, smoking may kill and all but it worked as my personal shrink for so many years I don’t even have enough fingers to count, if you are stressed? Smoke it away. Depressed? Anxious? Just came out of break up? Lost a dear one? Smoke. It. Away. It kinda works like a mantra in the smokers community. I mean it.

But the thing is, wanting to admit it or not, it is not a good thing for me or for anyone who is in this life for that matter. But it’s kind of one of those learned behaviors in which you just can’t help to associate those addictive little death tickets to a positive thing that can, even for a while, until the very last drag, make you feel better, calmer, more sane.

And after the week I had, in which I was lost and desperate for an answer other than ‘I don’t know’, I just needed to know what was so tempting about those little silly things that I used to light up every morning and have at least six more throughout the day. Because like it or not, this was a part of my life for years, years those that I am trying to figure out and better yet, know why they suddenly are hunting me again. And smoking was a huge part of my life, and then not anymore, and now apparently it is again. 

Wanna know why? Because just like loves, it’s something that is just hard to get over. And the longer you take to get over it, the easier it gets for it to kill you.

It’s so easy to reconnect to those bad parts about your past, those behaviors that you just know that are problematic and considered self-destructive and all of those things and yet, you can’t help but fall back to bad habits because they are simply hard to get over. Falling back into smoking is not much worse than founding yourself sleeping with an ex after a tragic break up. It will potentially drag you back like, ten steps in the getting-better road, and probably make you disappointed in yourself, but sometimes, and even though this answer is hella silly, you just can’t help it. You just can’t not do it.

Now, let’s just be honest: If you are trying to yet again quit smoking while in the middle of an existential crisis, don’t even bother trying. It’s impossible and, I am pretty sure this is, or at least it should be, in the contraindications on the back of those little fucking addictive therapeutic treasures: “Suspend the use of this medication if you are going through hell in your head and don’t a have a single little clue about what is going on. Bro, this way it ain’t gonna work.” My relationship with nicotine started for the wrong reasons and I thing they never, not even for a second, not even after sex, were good. And truth being told, it’s just like I used to say, a cigarette may contain 4.700 toxic substances, but I have 4.7 billion toxic substances in my head, those that made me hate myself for years and that are pretty much dragging me back for such a dark place now – if not through smoking, through wanting to call bad people who did nothing but hurt me just for the sake of hurting me. Because feeling pain is better than being lost.

Or at least for many years it was. Depression is such an ugly thing, it’s a door in hell with only your goddamn name on the door. And like I said on the text I wrote about depression – and yes, in case you are wondering, I do find myself pathetic for being able to write a bible about getting better and not doing better myself – the hardest part is accepting that you will never go back to what you were before. There will be relapses, and bad days, and hopeless decisions, because it’’s almost as if your mind was abducted and now this is your reality, and sometimes, just like we need a good nap, we need things to take this feeling away, something that will help us getting over that feeling, but probably will drag us back in the “progress chart” regarding other things. So yes, cigarettes are to me pretty much what yellow paint was for Van Gogh. He used to eat yellow paint because yellow symbolizes happiness, and he wanted to paint his insides in a happy color, hoping that this way he would be happier, I mean it was likely going to kill him or at least give him a hella of a stomachache, but he did it because he hoped it could make him feel better. And that is what my cigarettes always meant to me, – I am well aware they can and likely will kill me but I smoke them anyways because I hope they will make things easier, at least in that moment, at least until it ends. Yeah, I guess everyone has their yellow paint.

Getting over an addiction, regardless what kind, is not impossible, but if you my dear beloved reader is dealing with an existential crisis that is taking away from you your sleep, your appetite and pretty much your will to live, here is probably the worst advice I will ever give to you guys but I am not the type of bitch to say ‘hey here is what you shouldn’t do, even though I am doing it’ or even the good’ol ‘do what I say but not what I do’, so here is what you and I shouldn’t do, but I am doing anyways: I am allowing myself to feel this mess, this pain, this oh my god I am losing myself feeling, and I am doing what I know it’s effective to kill this, smoking and crying and digging deeper in my scars and not opening up. I know it’s bad, terrible even, but this is what I need to do now. Don’t ask me why, why I am dealing with things this way even if I know by heart they sound more effective than they actually are, but just like Ariel’s reason for trading her mermaid life for a boy was stupid, my reasons to go back to smoking don’t have to be that good either.

What I want you guys to know, and what I have been trying for a while to say is that…April is a hard month for me for reasons, so many, too many reasons. It’s almost over, ten more days, I can do it. But for now, I need this quick fix, this yellow paint, this easy way with a hard end. And I may not be sure why and I may not have answers to this relapse to begin with, but I know, I just know that this is what I have to live now. Maybe because I hope that once I get this month over with I will have my shit back together, or maybe because I need a little melancholy and that will reward me later with, I don’t know, another book idea perhaps. All I know is that, like it or not, judge it or not, kill me or not, I am doing this, not because I am back to where I began with my addiction, but because for now is something I really need, and I am in no position to deny myself anything. From tears, to cigarettes.

Until next week, I hope you have a great, amazing week, I hope you don’t fall back to bad habits even if you desperately feel like you need to, because even though this one sounded like a huge excuse to go back to smoking, I swear it’s so much more than that and I really really really wished this was something I could stop. It’s bigger than me and I can be the weakest bitch at times. Though if you wanna start an intervention or something, who knows? I may listen! Please don’t cry because of jealousy over a redhead bitch belting while pretending to be a mermaid and stay out of trouble, but since I am in no place to ask that to anyone, just please don’t forget to tell me all about it.