10 New Years Resolutions

1.     I can feel the nicotine travelling inside of me right into my lungs, and I can even feel it settle in and grasp my insides tightly and then flush out to my bloodstream. It’s like sucking on a twig made of pure euphoria and every time you breath it in you’re letting the tiny particles corrode you with their questionable ingredients. But somehow, amongst them you find the sweet hormonal release of oxytocin and I guess dopamine and all those other ‘happiness chemicals’.

I watch the beautiful veil of smoke submerge my field of vision and its intricate beautiful patterns dancing with each other, fighting with the wind around me and slowly dissipating. The most powerful source of light around me is the twig twirling in between my index and middle finger, its ember burning, and I wonder how hot it could be. Because it certainly looks like lava is flowing from the paper, but surely it cannot be that hot, wouldn’t it burn right off? It seems to me like the spot of incandescent yet not entirely burning hot lava is calling out to me, almost expecting me to quickly exhale so I can get back to inhaling it.

Am I breathing lava in? Could I? I would die, but, smoking kills, so – am I? The ash keeps growing on the other side of the speck of lava, opposite to the paper. I think that’s what’s calling on me. It keeps growing and growing, chewing more and more of the cigarette away. Taking it all away from me. Is it laughing at me? This grey nothing piece of unrefined coal is laughing at me, because I’m taking too long to take another drag. I turn the magic stick to its side and inspect the boastful ash a little closer. SHIT. It dropped on me. Fuck. Why does this always happen. It’s mocking me now. Screw him. And I take the biggest drag I’ve taken so far, enjoying every millisecond like I was breathing in an orgasm and then quickly tap the ash, so it flies away with the freezing wind. 

2.     The fizzling of the lava going off against the ashtray as I put the cigarette down is the last sound I hear before swiftly getting up and walking away from it.

As I struggle to open the heavy glass balcony door to make my way to the dark, poorly lit room, Sandra blares my way to “Pass me that bottle next to you will you?!”, and in a few long steps her direction I’m already standing on the opposite side of the bed where she sits.

When I stretch my arm holding the quite heavy Smirnoff bottle, the urgency and rudeness of her request dawns on her, and her expression quickly turns soft and humble as she mutters a sweet, “Thank you hun, how was your smoke?” She stopped smoking herself almost three years ago today, but she still feigns some sort of polite interest in our ways.

“I hope it wasn’t one of your philosophical deep-in-thought smokes… like you do sometimes. Was it?” She chuckled as she said that, hoping I would find it funny too. She’s looking up at me, waiting for a response she already knows the answer to, so I burst out laughing and joke about the loud group of girls I saw marching down the street, presumably on their way to a similar party that we would be having. And I set out to make her a drink in case she thought of drinking straight from the bottle, because she asked for the alcohol, but I realise she’s not even holding a glass or mix to drink it with. 

“You know…” Her laughter died before she said that, in a painfully serious tone considering the party atmosphere.

“It is okay if you haven’t talked to her in a while… I know you miss her; I mean – I can imagine you miss her a lot. But it doesn’t mean the love is dead or anything like that at all just because you’re not talking right now, you know?” The question mark floated with the smoky air in the room, is she waiting for an answer? I didn’t have one, so I just looked straight at her, as if hoping she would finish this conversation with herself, because I wasn’t ready to talk about it, about her. 

She read my mind because she continued, “When was the last time you two talked…? You know… Never mind – we really don’t have to talk about this, let’s just go back to the kitchen with everyone, shall we?”

I force the tiniest of smiles and nod, but still make an effort so as to not disappoint her, “It’ll officially be three weeks since our last call tonight” I look at my naked right wrist as if I had a watch with me, but it’s just something I do subconsciously now, “In about exactly 15…17 minutes actually.” 

I keep going, surprising myself as the words slip out before I can hold them back, “I realised when we were sitting back there, and… I guess I couldn’t stand the thought of it without enough nicotine in my body to handle it, you know?” I leaned my knee on the edge of the bed as I was starting to say it, which slowly turned to my sitting down next to her by the end of it, “But that was my last smoke… for a while.”

Her expression quickly changed again, her eyes were still sweet and loving, as if I were holding all of her attention, but this time her mouth almost grimaced, and when she noticed the tinniest move of her lips from the reflection in my eyes, she frowned, and the sweetness turned to anguish. And I realised she felt sorry for me, and that she felt bad for feeling sorry, because she knew what I was going through, and even if she did try to hide it with a selfless comment on my strength or ability to cope or what-not – my mind had turned her onto mute. She felt sorry for me, yet as much as that only added to my self-pity and misery, it felt good too? I felt recognised, and accepted, I felt part of something bigger, which I hadn’t felt in a long while. Without meaning to I leaped over to her and threw my arms around her. I guess crying to someone feels different than crying alone.

3.     Many hours later, when the night had already closed in and gone by, and the first hint of morning light filled the sky as I saw it from the open bedroom window, Elena sprung up from the bed we were sharing that night.

Startled, I turned around at her, and she leaned down to me on her way out and whispered, “I don’t feel good babe – I don’t feel good at all…” As she ran out and I traced her way to the bathroom with my eyes, and as she loudly shut the door behind her I realised why. And the gurgling and gagging noises coming from the other side of it pretty much erased any doubts from my mind. I felt a knot in my stomach, because I had drunk just as much as her if not more, and I could see myself going down the same route as her in a few minutes. So, I leaned over to drink from the plastic water bottle on the bedside table and wiping the drops of water from my face with my sleeve.

I let my mind drift off to thoughts on plastic bottles, and how easy it would be to put a drinking water tap in the house. Is this plastic recyclable? I held it up to inspect it – it was made from recyclable materials, which felt enough to quiet down my conscience. And my phone lit up in the darkness. 

I wasn’t expecting anyone to text me, ‘I bet it’s a stupid game notification… I get too many of those, I should change my settings.’ I thought. My mind wandered again as I slowly rolled the tap back on the bottle and set it back on the too-low table. ‘I’ll for sure pass out if I get on my phone right now.” Decided that, I turned around and went back to sleep; assuming I knew what was going on and not questioning that anybody else needed me outside of that dark silent room, now that Elena was on her way back to bed.

4.     I woke up to my cranium pounding into my frontal lobe to the rhythm of a painfully loud phone alarm. Screams followed, “Who’s phone is that??? Turn IT OFF!” “NOW” and a few sighs and cries in dramatized pain, as the girls writhed in painful hangovers in their beds. I looked over to the table, and indeed it was my phone ringing, so I grabbed it. For a moment I thought the caller ID was lying to me, and, reactionless, I stared at my phone in disbelief.

Till someone hastily grabbed it from me and turned it off and in a huff and puff Sandra dropped the thing on my lap and turned back around. I didn’t even look towards her, I just looked down at it and suddenly my mind was clear, and I had no more hungover or sleep deprivation to complain about. It was as if any serotonin missing in my body had been refilled to the brim, I felt full again? I felt happy. I’d forgotten what it felt like to receive a call from her. Immersed in this unexpected joy, and not wanting to escape from it, I stayed there and rejoiced in my luck. The phone pinged again, it was a text this time, also from her. And I noticed last night’s missed call as well.

“Hey, maybe you’re sleeping, I just wanted to talk to you, call me when you can?x” Suddenly a wave of anguish and anxiety travelled from the back of my neck, down my spine – forcing my body to wince back in the only painful shiver in history. Quavering like a little girl, I swiped up and opened the chat, and immediately pressed on the call button. I even surprised myself, as any other time I would’ve dwelled and tormented myself over making such call, but as I did it and the first beep made an appearance, reality switched back in. I jumped up and left the room, to sit back on the dirty plastic chair in the balcony where I had been smoking my last ever cigarette the night before. Fourth beep… I wondered why she wasn’t picking up. Maybe I shouldn’t be calling back right now, maybe she left, and she only meant that I should call her later. Maybe she knew I wasn’t going to pick up the first time and she just didn’t want me to think she wouldn’t want to call me, when, in reality, she never really wanted to call me. Maybe she’s not the one calling and may- 

“Hello?” That was her. That was her voice. She’s talking. Say something back.

“He-ey… Hi, hi, you called – you called… Hi”

5.     Four new cigarette buds stood scrunched up at the top of the overflowing ashtray as my still trembling hands struggled to open Elena’s almost empty pack to grab another magic twig. “I don’t know… I can’t just fly back to you whenever, you know this. I’ll have to at least find an excuse for my folks other than me just wanting to see you. We know this is what always happens, I –"

“Always?? Martha, we haven’t seen each other in months. I thought you would be back here by now, that’s what you said at least…” She was really angry at me. But it felt nice somehow, it meant she cared enough to get angry… I dismissed that thought as it popped in my head, because she doesn’t deserve it, I don’t deserve it either.

“You’re right, you’re right. I know – I did say that, and I meant it too and I want to, I’m just… I just don’t know right know. Like I want to go back, I just feel guilty whenever I even think about it.”

Her voice dropped a few tens of decibels, “So…?”

“So, I don’t know if I’m ever coming back right now. I just don’t know! And you keep asking, and everyone keeps asking me, and I just can’t tell you, okay? I don’t. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“You can’t deal with what right now? Me?” I think she might’ve been close to crying.

“I don’t want to miss out on things here, I don’t want to miss out on what’s going on here because that’s what I care about right now. And maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t care! I don’t – and you’re being unfair, and I don’t deserve this, and I can’t keep talking about this and going in circles with the same conversation. I’ll go back eventually, okay, I…”

“Yeah, yeah okay, I get it…” I was sure she was crying now, and I thought I heard my tiny heart crack a little as I heard it, but I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t do that to myself. Old me would’ve jumped at the thought of going back to her, but this is why new me was so much better, new me didn’t depend on anyone. Not her, not anyone. I don’t need to go back; I don’t need to do anything I’m not ready for.

6.     “No mummy, I know, I just really want to go back for at least a few weeks, just to sort some stuff out at work, I’ll be fine, I promise…Okay…Yeah of course, I’ll call you later, okay bye. Bye.” I hung up and blocked my phone and dropped it on the study table. Now that the lights were on, and everyone seemed a bit more human-like and responsive after breakfast I had proceeded to the classic detailing of the conversation I just had on the phone, and me and the two girls were sitting in a circle pondering over my own plans for the future, as we do sometimes. 

“So that was my mum, obviously… I didn’t tell her why I’m leaving but that’s okay, I just now have to look at schedules and call work and decide on dates that I –“

“You’re so fucking stupid, did you know that?” 

We both turned around as Elena said that and without stopping myself, I said, “How the fuck would you know – you’re so fucking stupid yourself.” Both their jaws dropped, and so did mine. I’d never heard me defend myself so promptly. It hadn’t ever been an automatic response for me, I guess it is now.

7.     We argued about it for a bit longer than we should’ve and after Sandra had given up on trying to calm the situation down, I decided I couldn’t take it any longer, “Look, I get it, I should come out to my mum, I should, I completely agree. And I know, I promised to only drive back to see her after I was fully okay but –“

“But you’re not okay, you’re still going to see her, you’re just not okay. And I think you’re just lying to yourself…” Sandra hadn’t been the most vocal in the conversation so far, yet she said this with such a firm tone that I couldn’t help but agree with her.

“I agree.” Elena jumped in.

“Of course you do.” I rolled my eyes annoyingly at Elena as she let herself smirk a little after she felt Sandra side with her. Something within me clicked, as it had been doing so often in the last few hours, and my back arched up as my voice matched Sandra’s authority, “I’m going back, and it’s my decision, and I can do as I please, first of all. I never said I’d never go back –

“But you know what’s gonna happen if you do...”

“Yes, I do” I shot a killer look over to Elena and made a mental note to – No, why would I let it die off in a stupid mental note?

“You have to stop interjecting, I can’t take it anymore, that’s the last time.” And it felt as if I was looking at myself watching me sternly put order in the room, and I even spooked myself a bit. And she was spooked too because her shoulders dropped and her lips rested in a fine line on her face, and she looked back at me acceptingly if not with a notch of resentment as well.

8.     “I’m sorry, but I mean it.” She relaxed, but I kept going. “And I’m sorry to disappoint and I’m ready for you to call me names. But I’m going to do this because I want to and because I’m a grown ass person with grown ass accomplishments, so best believe I’m going to do what I want to.” That was the last thing I said about that, and I did as I said, because that’s what I wanted to do.

9.     I had been a fucking idiot, they weren’t wrong, I just didn’t like it being pointed out to me, so that same evening I started being open and honest with the people that I loved and that loved me, which is not something I can say I had ever done before.

10.  And, even if I stopped hurting my health by only focusing on what gave me momentary joy and ignoring the bigger picture, I did continue to be a stupid idiot, because who in their twenties isn’t. I can only be thankful for what I’ve been given and work on giving even more back.