So, here I am a mere thirty-six hours into my non-smoking adventure. With the help of Nicoderm I am not a crazy bitch. This is definitely an improvement from all of the other times I've had to quit. I don't even have the physical craving for a smoke and have found not smoking to be incredibly easy... so far. The thing that hasn't been so easy is the incessant urge to shoot myself in the face, so that I don't have to live anymore. I knew this was coming. It always does when I decide to quit smoking. I think that I've defined myself so long through sex, smoking and swearing that I no longer know who to be when I don't have a smoke between my fingers. In fact, I don't know how to do something fun without smoking, nor do I know what to do to have fun without it. What activities make me happy? Gossiping on a patio while smoking. Going out for coffee and gossiping while smoking. Going out for beers and gossiping while smoking. I mean, I do have happinesses in my life that DON'T involve me inhaling nicotine every ten minutes. However, true "down-time" for me does. Actually, everything I do is smoking related somehow. I like my long drive to work because I can chain smoke. As I clean the house, I reward myself every few rooms with a smoke. Now what? I'm going to be eating a cookie every time and making myself even fatter? I think not.
My motivation is not my health and well being. My motivation is the approximate $26,691 I've spent in the last ten years. ALMOST TWENTY-SEVEN FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!! That is fucking ridiculous. And for what? Relaxation and my mental well being? I'm quitting because the $2,500 I spend in a year could pay for an engagement ring and some new tires. I'm quitting because I'm sick of saying, "I can't afford a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte." I make ok money. I certainly make enough to afford a cup of Starbucks every now and then. But, God-fucking-dammit I feel like it's not worth it. I don't want to leave my bloody house, or my bed for that matter. I can't imagine getting married in bed would be worth it. The new tires would go unused because I go insane driving my car, not to mention I can't even drive with the windows down any more. What good is being able to afford some overpriced caffeine if you don't want to enjoy it with some friends?
And then I ask myself if twenty-five hundred dollars is really worth all of this misery. Sometimes my answer is yes and sometimes it's no. I just don't want the rest of my life to involve me dreading the morning coming because I will have to get out of bed and be SO FUCKING BORED until the minute I'm asleep again. Is it worth me sitting here wondering when life will creep up on me and drag me into a new world? To feel like death is the preferable option to eternal suffering? I somehow manage to tell myself that I'm just being crazy and over dramatic. But, unfortunately that's how I feel more often than not. I think about my dad after he quit. Quitting killed him in the end. I know he was sick and he would have gone sooner than later anyways... but it kills me that he went so unhappy. He was alive for almost a year after he quit and he did not sit outside once. He didn't get to enjoy those beautifully dry, warm, Castlegar summer evenings in the last few months of his life. And that kills me. What if I never get to enjoy sitting outside, absorbing the atmosphere ever again either? What if I am like my mom and my Grandma. I don't even remember when they used to smoke... and they still say after meals, "I would just kill for a cigarette right now."
I hate myself for ever starting this disgusting habit. But, on the same token, I can't hate myself for it. If it wasn't for cigarettes I would have never met most of the people in my life. I never would have enjoyed most of the best nights of my life. I just don't think neutrality is as good as happiness, even if happiness comes with great sacrifice. I need to stop being my own worst enemy in this situation, tape on another patch, and march forward, no matter how much I don't want to. Life goes on, and I will have to too. And with that I'll go to bed and hope tomorrow doesn't come.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Always Waiting for Tomorrow
Well, here is one more feeble attempt at writing my deepest thoughts and feelings in a spot that feels private but really isn't. A little place for me to dive deep into my intellectual self and get some insight into my sanity (or lack thereof) from the outside world. I've never tried to fight with these damn blogs before. In fact, I haven't recorded any of my deep, dark thoughts on the internet since MySpace became unfashionable. Damn Facebook for being user friendly and blog free! I was proud of my MySpace mutterings. I am hoping that this blog does not end up with me drunk and bleary eyed most mornings at three am, pouring my heart out to the virtual world in hopes that someone will read it and tell me, "you're not crazy!" There is something endearing about typing my innermost obsessions rather than writing them. For one a back space is much easier to use than that dastardly White Out. Secondly, I can certainly type with a lot more ease than I can print neatly (and, Lord knows, if it's not printed neatly it's being rewritten). Perhaps one day I will lose my inner crazy and won't need to analyze and reanalyze my own thoughts, but until that day, I need an outlet to let my brain pour itself out and re-sort itself. I am sure glad I don't need to take a Swiffer Duster to my brain. It must be a mess up there.
So, life. Life has changed in about a million and one ways since the last time I wrote like this. Life three years ago was ridiculously unhappy, extremely confusing, very rebellious and, I wouldn't be surprised if people used the term "manic" to describe me three years ago. In fact, just typing that makes me think, "hmmm... I very well could have had a wee manic episode." I did dangerous things with no regard for my person. I never slept. And I most certainly did stupid, stupid things that I didn't think were stupid at all. I was "dating" (and I use that term about as loosely as I was seeing these people, if you catch my drift) completely inappropriate people that I knew were completely inappropriate. I dated the boys I knew would break my heart if I didn't break their hearts first. I didn't come home, sometimes for days. I drank more than I ate and then supplemented coke for beer if I was getting a little sleepy. And during all of this I thought I was the happiest I had ever been. I thought it was appropriate for me to have several boys on the go and to live as though life was one big party. I was waiting for my dad to die... not in the bad way, but in the kind of way that I knew it was coming and I just wanted the suffering to end. Right now, I am talking about my pre-Aaron time. He dug me out of a much deeper hole than I ever thought he had.
I can say that currently I am genuinely happy. There are things I would change about my life. There are always things I would change about my life. But I think that I am emotionally the healthiest I have been since I was about five. I've accepted the changes that have occurred in my life and, although I don't like them, I get that this is the way life has to be from now until the end of time. My dad will never be back in human form on this Earth. He will not walk me down the aisle. He will not meet the love of my life. I won't get to answer that fateful phone call 1440 Sept 1, 2006. I can't change what has already happened. I may still kick myself for it, but I've accepted it at least. I know what my mom is like and I know that I won't be able to make her a different person. She now holds no life in her hands but her own and I feel like that just isn't my battle. Does it make me a bad person that I was willing to fight for my Dad and not for my Mom? Or is it just a matter of different dynamics between she and I. A different combination of attraction and repulsion than my Dad and I ever experienced. I don't think there was a part of my Dad that pushed away from me, or a part of me that recoiled from him.
In three years I have grown up in a way I didn't think possible. I see now that I was a rebellious bitch, and wish that I could take it back. Mom and I may have had many a difference between us, but she never deserved half of what I handed out to her. I feel awful for the way I treated Aaron in the first months of out lives together. I treated him like I did any man and assumed that he would hurt me if I didn't hurt him first. I give him props for sticking with me and fighting through everything with me and still being here by my side today. It probably would have been a lot easier for him to just walk away from me (which I intended to make him do at the time) than to stick beside me and fight for me, when I wasn't sure I wanted to be fought for. He deserves all the love I can give him for holding on when all I did was push away. It's not that I didn't recognize what a great guy he was, it was that I was afraid for myself to become vulnerable and involved again. Wasn't Chris the nicest man in the world when we first started dating? If there's one thing I can give Chris it was that he treated me like a fucking queen when we were first together. And then it all turned into one big nightmare. I'm not sure if I ever felt like it would truly turn into a nightmare with Aaron, but I suppose I thought at the time, "why give it that opportunity?" I wish I knew what drove me to be such a terrible person at that particular moment in life. Like I said earlier, I think I was more manic than anything.
Sitting here today, I still can't believe that Aaron is here and that he loves me the way he does. I think now that I deserve it, but for what I did to him, I should still be paying. That being said, it wasn't just my love life that was fucked up when we met. I don't think a single part of my life was on the right course. All I remember about that period of my life is being really loud and really drunk most of the time. I think of past times in my life and have trouble processing it. I really feel as though I have had a very easy life (with the exception of a few speed bumps). I feel as though most of the things that have ever happened to me are relatively insignificant and have made no impact on my life. Maybe it's because I've had those few atomic bombs go off and shatter my life into something that I can't even recognize. Maybe it's because the past seems as though it was a completely different lifetime ago. Maybe it's because I can't even recognize my childhood as my own. Disconnecting yourself from any emotional remnant of the past seems to really trivialize those milestones that happened.
It seems like saying goodbye to my Dad has trivialized nearly everything in my life to be honest. But, enough about the past. You can only wallow in that puddle for so long. The future is stretched out in front of me. The big thing I am really looking for is a ring from Aaron. Three years and a bit down the road at our age is a long time to not be engaged. Especially when you know that person is the one you want to be with. Oh well. I am not going to push him yet. I am just happy being with him. Being married can wait forever really. But, enough bantering for today. I'm sure this will turn into an obsession quickly. It feels good to spill the contents of your conscious mind and unclutter it.
So, life. Life has changed in about a million and one ways since the last time I wrote like this. Life three years ago was ridiculously unhappy, extremely confusing, very rebellious and, I wouldn't be surprised if people used the term "manic" to describe me three years ago. In fact, just typing that makes me think, "hmmm... I very well could have had a wee manic episode." I did dangerous things with no regard for my person. I never slept. And I most certainly did stupid, stupid things that I didn't think were stupid at all. I was "dating" (and I use that term about as loosely as I was seeing these people, if you catch my drift) completely inappropriate people that I knew were completely inappropriate. I dated the boys I knew would break my heart if I didn't break their hearts first. I didn't come home, sometimes for days. I drank more than I ate and then supplemented coke for beer if I was getting a little sleepy. And during all of this I thought I was the happiest I had ever been. I thought it was appropriate for me to have several boys on the go and to live as though life was one big party. I was waiting for my dad to die... not in the bad way, but in the kind of way that I knew it was coming and I just wanted the suffering to end. Right now, I am talking about my pre-Aaron time. He dug me out of a much deeper hole than I ever thought he had.
I can say that currently I am genuinely happy. There are things I would change about my life. There are always things I would change about my life. But I think that I am emotionally the healthiest I have been since I was about five. I've accepted the changes that have occurred in my life and, although I don't like them, I get that this is the way life has to be from now until the end of time. My dad will never be back in human form on this Earth. He will not walk me down the aisle. He will not meet the love of my life. I won't get to answer that fateful phone call 1440 Sept 1, 2006. I can't change what has already happened. I may still kick myself for it, but I've accepted it at least. I know what my mom is like and I know that I won't be able to make her a different person. She now holds no life in her hands but her own and I feel like that just isn't my battle. Does it make me a bad person that I was willing to fight for my Dad and not for my Mom? Or is it just a matter of different dynamics between she and I. A different combination of attraction and repulsion than my Dad and I ever experienced. I don't think there was a part of my Dad that pushed away from me, or a part of me that recoiled from him.
In three years I have grown up in a way I didn't think possible. I see now that I was a rebellious bitch, and wish that I could take it back. Mom and I may have had many a difference between us, but she never deserved half of what I handed out to her. I feel awful for the way I treated Aaron in the first months of out lives together. I treated him like I did any man and assumed that he would hurt me if I didn't hurt him first. I give him props for sticking with me and fighting through everything with me and still being here by my side today. It probably would have been a lot easier for him to just walk away from me (which I intended to make him do at the time) than to stick beside me and fight for me, when I wasn't sure I wanted to be fought for. He deserves all the love I can give him for holding on when all I did was push away. It's not that I didn't recognize what a great guy he was, it was that I was afraid for myself to become vulnerable and involved again. Wasn't Chris the nicest man in the world when we first started dating? If there's one thing I can give Chris it was that he treated me like a fucking queen when we were first together. And then it all turned into one big nightmare. I'm not sure if I ever felt like it would truly turn into a nightmare with Aaron, but I suppose I thought at the time, "why give it that opportunity?" I wish I knew what drove me to be such a terrible person at that particular moment in life. Like I said earlier, I think I was more manic than anything.
Sitting here today, I still can't believe that Aaron is here and that he loves me the way he does. I think now that I deserve it, but for what I did to him, I should still be paying. That being said, it wasn't just my love life that was fucked up when we met. I don't think a single part of my life was on the right course. All I remember about that period of my life is being really loud and really drunk most of the time. I think of past times in my life and have trouble processing it. I really feel as though I have had a very easy life (with the exception of a few speed bumps). I feel as though most of the things that have ever happened to me are relatively insignificant and have made no impact on my life. Maybe it's because I've had those few atomic bombs go off and shatter my life into something that I can't even recognize. Maybe it's because the past seems as though it was a completely different lifetime ago. Maybe it's because I can't even recognize my childhood as my own. Disconnecting yourself from any emotional remnant of the past seems to really trivialize those milestones that happened.
It seems like saying goodbye to my Dad has trivialized nearly everything in my life to be honest. But, enough about the past. You can only wallow in that puddle for so long. The future is stretched out in front of me. The big thing I am really looking for is a ring from Aaron. Three years and a bit down the road at our age is a long time to not be engaged. Especially when you know that person is the one you want to be with. Oh well. I am not going to push him yet. I am just happy being with him. Being married can wait forever really. But, enough bantering for today. I'm sure this will turn into an obsession quickly. It feels good to spill the contents of your conscious mind and unclutter it.
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