Rock Star Hour

Day Three

So ... we cut down to six a day on the weekdays for a week.

Then, we did four a day for a week.

Then, we practically gave up, until we changed our minds.

I got really drunk on Halloween. Mostly, on accident. We forgot to eat dinner, and had a beer at a friend's house while getting ready. Then, we stopped by a party. We were supposed to hit up one of my friend's band's shows. A bunch of people were going to be there. Really missed out on seeing my friend BeckySue in her Sarah Palin costume. :( But anyway, I had one drink at the party. Top shelf, Goose in fact, but too much in one, and not enough food. I was finished for the night.

***

It is so lovely, I don't mind saying, to have someone take care of you. A part of me twinges to say that, but to have someone who cares for you in ways you didn't even know you needed.

I have only felt that once before, and not nearly in the same capacity. I once had someone who was older and seemed to know more, and was there for me financially, but less and less emotionally. And less and less physically, and by that, I mean he just was not around. He got a promotion and had to travel more and more for his job. It got to the point where the money he gave me before he left felt like allowance. And when he was gone it was five-minute conversations on the phone and good night. And when he was back it would be fighting or he wanted to hang out with the guys or he wanted to relax after working in Los Angeles, or Dallas or San Antonio or Denver or Phoenix, or wherever else.

It got to the point where wanting to spend time with the person put me in the "needy" category. I'm not saying I didn't whine. I probably didn't handle it in the most mature fashion.

I've been on both sides of that argument -- the needy one, the wanting time one, and the other.

Do you know that feeling where you recite something someone older once told you? Something maybe you didn't believe at the time, or think about since until you hear yourself saying it?

That's how I feel when I have that argument.

***

Lately, the thing I've been realizing, though, is how much work it takes to maintain something, even so wonderful.

I once wrote or believed or came to defend the idea that happiness takes work. I decided at some point, though, that I would rather work to be happy than to stay miserable, because neither is automatic. I just got used to one over the other.

The same is true for relationships, except it's three-fold, because there is you, and the other person, and the relationship. It's best to remind myself of all these layers, just in that all three involve work. To some that may sound simple as well, but I've spent so much time healing on the individual level; it helps to remember.

Omg, though, I swear sometime I will write about something else, but it is the most wonderful feeling to love and be loved, to feel understood, to be excited about everyday things, and the future. It is truly overwhelming, in the best way one could imagine.

I'm just happy.

I'm dying for a cigarette, and I am happy as fucking hell.

Labels: Drinking, Happiness, Quitting Smoking, Relationships

Nicorette gum makes my eyes bleed

But I'm having a piece. Yes, it's that time again. Cara's quitting smoking again.

Decided to start skipping the wake up cigarette since I always want one with my morning coffee at work. First off, the first couple hours of the day without a smoke is like nails on a chalkboard inside your veins. Seriously, have you ever heard your own blood cry?

For some reason, morning's hard. After work's hard. I thought work would be hard, but the cigs during work feel more like "addiction" cigarettes than any other ones. You take a few minutes. You have one. Then at the same time your crying veins quiet down they get loud all over again, because you just want to sit and drink coffee and smoke, and you don't want to get back to work.

It's funny what else. How when you smoke all the time, you don't even notice, but if you are cutting down you mind that you don't even notice. I picked up a paper, read an article with half a cigarette, and all I could think was "half my cigarette's gone," and I couldn't even enjoy the last half because the paper kept burning and it kept getting shorter, and my mind couldn't shake the dread. I don't know if it was worse it was almost gone or that almost gone meant back to work.

Maybe both.

I used to always be able to tell when I began to hate a job, because that is when I begin to smoke the most. You start smoking enough at a job then it's like any little amount of work warrants a smoke break.

"I'll check on this table, then have a cigarette."

"After I make this drink, I'm gonna have a cigarette."

"After I brush these pool tables, I'll have a cigarette."

"After this table leaves, I'm going to have a cigarette."

It's funny the way cigarettes punctuate things. It's also funny how they make little rewards, like offering a piece of candy or a Coke to a kid for being good.

Especially with schoolwork:

"I read everything; I just have to write the paper. I'll have a cigarette, and get started right away."

Or studying:

"I just finished a chapter. I'm gonna have a cigarette."

Or writing an article:

"OK, it's mostly written. There's _____ words there. I just need to tweak the lede a little bit and trim it. I'll have a cigarette, then take another look."

There's the get-off-work cigarette, the home-from-work cigarette, the after-dinner cigarette, the before-bed cigarette, cigarette with a beer, cigarette with a glass of wine, cigarette with a good book, cigarette with a walk to the store, cigarette on the way to class, cigarette right after class, cigarette after a movie, cigarette after a two-hour trip to Target ...

***

We have a plan, my partner and I, and we are going to beat this. We're going to do it for good. I know because ...

My grandmother used to talk to me about it, reflecting on all the dying cancer-ridden beds she has sat beside in the last several years. Once, she said to me, "Young people never think it'll matter. They think it'll take a few years off your life, and you won't want them. But when you get older, all you can think is 'just a few more years.' And you're not ready to go yet."

I vaguely understood what she was trying to tell me, but I didn't want to, either.

Somehow, though, I believe her. I'm thinking about how in love I am. I'm thinking about the career I'm about to start. I'm thinking I would like to have children. I'm thinking, I've got a lot I still want to do.

Seeing my mother go through what she just went through leaves such a horrible aftertaste in my mouth, that should be even worse with each cigarette I have. I know it breaks so many hearts when i do.

She quit when she was in her early 30s. Colon and liver cancer at 50 was not part of the plan. Like the stroke she had when I was 14, the doctors can't ever name what exactly pulled the trigger, but if genes are an map outlining which roads your body might take, if they are an indication of what's in store, mine probably aren't the sort of thing I should ignore.

They say in the first five years after quitting stress and trauma can trigger relapse. I've only quit for two significant stretches of time out of the strings of attempts I've made, but in each case, where I started again, there were similarities.

I know the similarities, and I know cigs have never helped make anything better. In the worst times, they gave me something to do, something to focus on to dull the pain. Yes, I enjoy smoking occasionally, but at a pack each day, so few are memorable compared to the others: burnt up amplified addiction, making me short of breath, making me irritable, making me wonder if the smoke on the way to class doesn't linger and bother some stranger next to me, trying to learn, making me wonder which headache is going to be the headache, making me wonder which cells are already there, making me wonder how many more lines will be drawn on my face ...

Addiction is a terrible thing. This shit's evil, but I think knowing something for what it is could be the key to beating it. Maybe the key to beating it is doing so before it breaks you.

Labels: Addiction, Cancer, Quitting Smoking

Shag Day Lunch Break

"It's that time, huh?" my boss says, opening the fridge.

"Yep," I say with a smile.

I put my leftover hamburger (fake meat!) helper in the office microwave for a minute-and-a half. I fill up my water bottle and descend the steps and go down the hallway out the back door. Students are gathered in clusters, others walking, some on the phone, but I see one empty concrete table left for me, in the middle of everything.

I take a seat and start on my food. It is lukewarm -- more like half-hot, half-cold. I eat the hot parts and decide to save the rest for dinner. I reach for my bag of chips that is supposed to be my afternoon snack. Ever bite into a regular potato chip when you were almost positive you had brought jalapeno chips?

I open up the book I'm reading, and glance over it while smoking a cigarette. Having taken the last table, I am obliged to say "yes" when a young man asks if he can sit with me.

I read. He quietly eats his lunch, sitting sideways. A passerby approaches and says to the stranger, "Good job, today, man!"

And he says thank you.

Ellen Willis is talking about baroque and classical sex, defining them and applying them to music, books, movies, pornography, pop psychology and feminism.

I listen. I try to figure out which I subscribe to, but I can't, as each seems to have within it some inherent setback, a cultural paradox she develops and points out.

I turn the page without another thought, and begin an essay on her desert island album pick. Turns out to be a lengthy but pensive ode to The Velvet Underground. I am not surprised by this, as the book contains another essay, "Beginning to See the Light," the same words in gold decorating its spine.

I eat up Willis' descriptions of the punk aesthetic and its ties and frays from rock 'n' roll, how art rock became a means to justify itself as such, and how it arose out of need for self-acceptance as well as respect. She goes on to talk about new wave as the culmination of the two and as an antithesis as well.

The stranger gets up, and I turn to light another cigarette. He stops and says, "I'm sorry, but why the cigarette?"

I stare dumbfounded, not quite insulted. His air has that of a legitimate question, with not even an echo of condemnation; the sound of his voice is pure inquisition.

"You just look so peaceful," he said. It's a beautiful day, and you've got your book, and you look so comfortable. I was just wondering if it added something. You just didn't look like anything was missing."

Again, he is genuine, but unapologetic, just staring at me expectedly.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm an addict. I guess if I knew the answer to that, maybe I could ..." I couldn't finish my sentence.

On second thought, a word enters me: companionship. But the stranger who has been sitting silently near me for quarter of an hour is gone.

I return to my book, and now Lou Reed has become something that Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend never could be. And now "White Light/White Heat," "Heroin," "Pale Blue Eyes" and so many others contain the spirit of contempt, despair, confusion, enlightenment, estrangement and many other elements, and they just sort of wash over me all at once with her words, and Reed's lyrics are floating through the spaces in the crowd.

Lou Reed said, "I don't know."

And Ellen Willis said, "I don't know."

I checked my time, and put up my cell phone. I closed my book, and put it away. Through all this I am exchanging stares with another stranger, 10 feet away, sitting down, facing me, on a wall. He's faceless, except for his red and yellow striped polo shirt, and a sternness that is not in the least bit a smile. His look tries to penetrate across to me, but I cast my eyes downward.

I clumsily take up my things and stand up. I trip over my left foot. I still do not look back. I sigh, and walk slowly through the doors, up the stairs, head full of words, and sit back down at my desk.

Labels: Addiction, Books, Ellen Willis, Music, People-watching, Quitting Smoking

Sooo ... short and sweet

Something I've been thinking about: change. When I became vegetarian more than five years ago, a friend of mine told me it would help to think about all the new foods I was going to try instead of what I'd be "giving up." That way it would stay exciting and new and interesting, and the transition would be easier.

A few years later, one day I was in tears before I left for Seattle, and one thing that helped was when someone dear to me told me I wasn't leaving anything. Instead, I was only adding to my life. I would only add new people and places to my life. And she was right. I had only to add to my experience beautiful, lovely times I would remember forever. And people who would touch me forever, and the things they said to me also, long after they were gone.

I quit smoking several years ago, and then started again a couple of years later. But I quit again, nearly three months ago. And I am a nonsmoker. I know this now, because I have added to my life. I bike and run miles. I want to do long distance running, or a triathlon. Or be able to run without getting tired any time I want. To be able to keep up with puppies at the park and children at camp. To have energy to do the things I need to do and the things I love to do.

I also eat healthier. So I guess I've made a lot of positive changes. And physically, mentally, and spiritually it feels good. The difference is not what's been lost. Not you know, not smoking in itself, but waking up and going running, for example.

I think I would like from now on to look at all changes in this way. In a ... what is this going to add? way. Because then all change could be good, if you let it. All things lost would actually be creating space for something to be gained, rather than limiting it.

This just makes me so happy. It really does.

Newness is liberating. Learning and doing can keep you so young and curious. It's a wonderful feeling.

Labels: Change, Quitting Smoking, Seattle, Spirituality