oblomov

used to do this all the time back when i was a kid. mosquitos freaked me out, so i tried to find places in the house where i couldn’t hear that aweful sound. i’ve slept on the floor, in the bathtub, on the couch, in a chair.
last time i slept on the floor was at a party, i think. like leazile said over a year ago: it’s not really a worth doing/not doing kinda thing. it’s just a thing.

I was nine years old when I smoked my first cigarette. The particular flavor doesn’t even exist anymore, if it ever did at all. I believe it was Marlboro Spearmint.
A friend of mine from school came by my house and said he stole his big sisters cigarettes and that he was on his way to the park to try one. I can’t really remember why I agreed to come with but I can still remember the smell of those fresh cigarettes in their pack.
It wasn’t long before I bought my own, something which a nine year old could easily do back then.
At ten years old I announced to my parents that I had quit smoking. They were too stunned and surprised to be mad. If anything, they found it amusing. But I never really quit.
I tried to quit twice after that. Once when I was 13 and later when I was 18. The second time I lasted for about a year, but every day I thought about lighting up.
So now I’m 25 and I’ve finally managed to quit smoking.

Somehow I had never really thought of myself as a smoker. I viewed myself as someone who smoked occasionally, socially.
When I was watching ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip’, a show by Aaron Sorkin, something clicked.
One of the main characters was under a lot of stress because the woman he loved had complications during labor and it was uncertain if she would make it. Also, back at work, a subordinate and friend was in a particularly bad situation.
Because the character was under so much pressure, the doctor advised him to go to a bar across the street from the hospital and have a drink. He responded by saying “I can’t have a drink. I’m an alcoholic.”

This I translated to “I am a smoker, but I don’t have to smoke.”
And that was basically it. I left my sigarettes, my ashtray and my lighter within reach for over a month. At first to test myself, but later on just to get used to them being there without me lighting up.
Now I rarely think about it, but when I do I feel relieved and happy.