Smoking is my new hobby

Smoking is my new hobby. It almost seemed like drinking was something I could stick with, but the hangovers just got worse and worse, and one morning while I was showering and last night's red wine and tortilla chips poured down the drain, I decided to quit. That's not true. I didn't decide to quit, my body did that for me. The next beer I opened smelled like a yeast infection and reminded me of puke before it had even entered my system. I felt like a failure. Drinking, being intoxicated had been such a relief for me, a thing that kept me euforic, when I knew that the only logical thing to do was being sad, even kill myself. 

I had failed the beer. The one thing it asked of me to grant me happiness I couldn't do. So i took up smoking. I had smoked at parties before, but there was something really satisfying and comically tragic about buying a whole pack and intending on smoking the whole thing myself. I wanted my lungs to hurt. Ironically, I wasn't a very avid smoker. That only took about three smokes. But I pushed through it, just like I had done with the drinking. 

I never actually got very good at it. But I loved it enough to stick with it. My body reacted horribly to the nicotine, and I never got used to the downright offensive smell of myself after a long night of chain smoking. 

I had tried other hobbies, but I never had the patience for embroidery. The inevitable stitching and tearing it apart because it never got pretty angered me. I had tried running, but discovered that I was too much of a quitter to run more than a mile at a time. I had tried drugs but it is no fun having a hobby that makes people worry about you. 

Smoking was a good hobby. I could do it in secret, and I could shower the proof away. It was easier when nobody had to know. 

At first I couldn't smoke more than a couple a night. But I found that turning on some old blues and just a single glass of red wine did the trick. It was easier to smoke when wine was involved. It was like a higher power had decided that they just went together. With some wine the smoke just flowed easier in and out of my lungs. And I usually imagined myself in the bar where the blues was played, smoking alongside the rest of the crowd because no one knew any better. Getting high on the nicotine and the melancholy didn't come with the side effects and hangovers that drugs and alcohol did. 

Soon I was able to smoke a whole pack a night. Every second I longed for that secret moment that I shared with the cigarettes. The cool winter air was biting my cheeks as I sat in the window blowing smoke like a steam engine going faster and further with no intention of stopping.  

Every morning I woke up longing for that shared moment between me and a cigarette. The melancholic evenings had a strange sense of euphoria. This was worth living for. This was perhaps why I lived. Months went by like this. It felt like I was invented for the sole purpose of smoking. 

One particularly bad morning I woke up, smelling like I had been digested by a combustion plant. I felt nauseous and suddenly it felt like the morning of red wine, tortilla chips and failure all over again. It all just felt wrong. I had a strange sensation like something was wrong in the fabric of the universe. Or maybe it was just one of those cases where I felt so sick that everything felt wrong. 

I came down with the flu and I kept feeling as ill as ever. Of course I couldn't smoke due to the trouble I had swallowing and breathing. I felt pathetic. Not only had I never felt worse, my body had once again refused something I loved doing. 

I put off calling the doctor. I guess I’m just one of those people. I called after a week of feeling more and more like I wanted to kill myself because everything hurt so bad. And of course because my mom had angrily told me over the phone that I was immature for not taking my health seriously. My mom could get me to do things like no one else. She was the one who got me to quit the drugs and start running instead. She was really good at getting me to start things. But i was just really good at failling.

They send somebody to pick me up. I felt embarrassed. I could have taken a cab. Actually I probably couldn't, but I didn't want them fussing. 

The doctor performed every examination in the book. I felt light headed and my vision was blurred like I had fog stuck in my eyes. I couldn't tell you what happened in the examination room, every memory got covered in the uncertain haze of fever. 

They sent me home with some antibiotics and told me that they would call in a couple of days if any of the examination results looked worrying. I slept for two days straight, and was woken up by that very call. On the other line was the doctor. Not the secretary, which I found peculiar. His voice sounded torn. Just like my moms did that time she had to tell us that her and dad was getting a divorce. She tried to keep a happy face so we wouldn't understand that this was something to cry about.

“Hi, we need you to come back in. Your test results were a little irregular. We’ll send someone to pick you up.”

I came back in and had an MRI-scan. That was the day my body truly failed me. That was the day I was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer.