Addiction

I remember addiction.

I smoked my first cigarette when I was only eleven, and smoked it for real the first time when I was thirteen. I used to steal Marlboros from Bashas, or change from my mom's purse to buy them at the liquor store where my cleavage was my ID. I used to fight over the last cigarette, and pace nervously in desperate anticipation. I begged smokes off of strangers. I smoked strangers' butts out of ashtrays. Now that I think about this, the mystery of where I got my first cold sore is probably solved (but the mystery of how I don't have something far worse is not).

I remember quitting. J--- didn't smoke, and I was self-conscious about it. I knew I tasted like an ashtray and didn't want to kiss him with that mouth. So I decided to quit. Little did I know that the Welbutrin I had been prescribed for depression was a mega dose of the same stuff they gave people to quit smoking, and other than a few days of cravings and irritability, and a few almost-slips (like grabbing a cigarette from a friend right as J-- walked in the gate), quitting was pretty uneventful. I just quit.

But then I started again. Not quite like the last time I 'quit' for a few days when I ran out of cigarettes and decided not to buy any more. I had been off the nicotine for months. Then I randomly decided to smoke a cigarette on the way home from work, and suddenly I was smoking again. Then I got pregnant. So I quit again. Then I lost the baby, and the first thing I did after was smoke a cigarette (even though J-- thought he had talked me out of it). Basically, I was playing at quitting.

I don't really remember the last cigarette I smoked. I don't remember that moment of finality when I was clearly determined to be done with it all. I think it slowly settled in as my convictions slowly solidified; one day Jehovah was more important to me than smoking, and sex, and even J---. Of course, quitting J--- was harder to do. It took something bigger than willpower to finally be done with him. If I'm being honest, the decision being taken out of my hands is what had to happen for me to be done with him. I guess love is my drug of choice.

All these years later, cigarettes are still in my dreams. I dream that I am still a secret smoker, that I am living a lie, pretending to be smoke-free while harboring packs of cigarettes tucked into secret corners. I dream that people see me smoke but don't really understand what I'm doing. Maybe the cigarettes are a metaphor for other things (who really knows when it comes to dreams?), or maybe it is my addiction asserting itself deep in my subconscious. I just know that in my dreams, smoking is delicious, and I couldn't stop if you held a gun to my head.

My waking mind has a little more dominion. Or should I say, my waking mind remembers why I don't want to smoke. No, it's not for my health, although that would be a very good reason to abstain. And it's not the cost (I hear interpreters are well-paid, but that might just be a rumor). No, my waking mind remembers that I made a promise on February 26, 2000, and this is one part of that promise that is easy to keep. It is a simple matter of never looking back.

And yet, the dreams. And yet, when the right elements combine -- a smell, a sound, an emotion -- the craving comes on strong, like I never quit in the first place. I haven't smoked a cigarette in over 12 years, but I can still remember the taste, the feeling of relief as the nicotine hit my bloodstream. I forget for microseconds that I am not a smoker. But then my promise reminds me. I think it's not my promise so much as the One I promised that snaps me back to attention and keeps me away from that vile, deadly habit.

Cigarettes are not even my drug of choice. I don't have to explain what dreams I have of J---. I don't have to explain how I crave those feelings, how they sit in my mind every day like anxious puppies, tail-wagging for my attention as I try to distract myself with daily living. I have not found a suitable partner, and so I have to push those thoughts away, and those are the ones that take up the most space, so that nicotine doesn't have much of a stage to dance on.

If I have these thoughts about my addictions, and if I cannot conquer them by my own power, if the only reason that I am not living the life I lived before is because I gave that part of myself over as well as I could, to be managed by someone far more powerful than I, then it is no surprise to me that my brother had a moment of weakness. The surprise is that he did not have it sooner. I am humbled by my brother's strength of will.

"Goodnight, sweet brother. I will see you when you wake."