She's a naughty girl with a bad habit.

Cigarettes.
Addictive little fuckers, aren’t they? Except, up until, oh, I don’t know, THIS BLOG POST, I was always adamant that I wasn’t
addicted to smoking. Oh no, me? I can stop any time I want! I
smoke because I ENJOY it! I WANT to smoke! I’m not controlled by my habit, NO
WAY. I do it CONSCIOUSLY! WILLINGLY! I CAN STOP ANY TIME I WANT!

I
used to say the same thing about casual sex, and it was only when I gave that
up that I realised how detrimental it had been to my well being- harmless fun as
I was determined to write it off as at the time. I was doing and dumping as a tool to protect myself. I’m pretty sure that
right now I am using tobacco in the exact same way.

I’ve
thought about giving up smoking for a long time. But when I say thought about it I mean thought about it in the same way that I think about how nice it would be live in
one place longer than twenty minutes, or in the way I think about what I might call a rescue dog, or what Beyoncé is
doing right now this very second.

I
know the theory of why I should stop,
but I hate should-ing anything (it’s
a personal development point and I blame it squarely on my father. HI DAD!) so traditionally
I’ve given up giving up after a day,
or a week, or in the case of earlier this year four whole months because, well. Everyone else is doing it. Fuck,
THIS IS ITALY. Smoking in Italy is a bit like forgoing toilet paper in New
Delhi: You know it’s a bit stupid and dirty, and ultimately it will be your
downfall, but the locals do it so that makes it okay.

I
read an obituary last week that the deceased man had written himself. He said, My regret
is that I felt invincible when young and smoked cigarettes when I knew they
were bad for me. Now, to make it worse, I have robbed my beloved Mary Jane of a
decade or more of the two of us growing old together…
 I feel
such the "thief" now - for stealing so much from her…

I
think that was what planted this final seed. The future father of my children,
my unborn kids, the family I’ll make
for myself- the things I have no real concept of right now but one day will exist- this is something I have to
do for them. And I think this is absolutely related to the celibacy.

GUYS.
I AM SO NOT DONE TALKING ABOUT THE CELIBACY.

I’m learning how to stop punishing myself for having emotions, and hurting with of all the
things I can’t control, and trying to figure out what I can control, and the
no-sex-thing has led me to this place wherein I am in the process of becoming
truly happy.

Happy people can conceive of even more future
happiness, and whereas once upon a time I thought I’d die a lonely spinster-
and I mean, legitimately, that I’d always be an aunt but never a mother, or
that nobody would ever really want to date me, and that I’d have to learn to
rely only on myself until the day I died- now, I see that I am part of
something bigger.

I
waxed lyrical about The Month of Awesome and my Roman Family because these
things really did change me; I see that there are people who care about me, and
honestly, truly and really, I’m not exaggerating when I say, I didn’t think I was worth caring all that
much about until this year.

And
now I’m getting totally away from my point, which is basically that I started
to think not about giving up smoking,
but about why I smoke in the first
place (right as soon as I had stopped mentally decorating the New York
apartment Clementine Elizabeth and Sebastian Richard will be brought up in).

I had
to sit all the parts of my personality down in a group meeting to figure out how
the ABSOLUTE HECK I allowed more or less twelve years of smoking happen. And the
answers aren’t pretty.

I
smoke when I feel awkward at a party, as a reason to excuse myself instead of
including myself.

I
smoke when I’m feeling exposed, so that I can stare at my hands instead of my
inhibitions.

I
smoke because it puts a physical barrier between me and whomever I am with.

I
smoke to feel like I am in control.

It is
really, really, important to me that
I deal with these things. I've already done so much searching in my soul to learn how to be better, how to be me, how to maybe feel more worthy. So I quit.

I quit smoking, Internet. Day one. Done.

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