Day Two

I am smoking my seventh cigarette of the day. That’s seven cigarettes in two hours. That’s way too much. 

I thought I would wean myself off cigarettes by lowering the number of cigarettes I smoke in a day. That has not worked—at all.  I have three packs left from my carton. I am supposed to quit once and for all when these three packs are gone. The idea of running out of cigarettes, of not having another one, scares the hell out of me. They say it is more difficult to quit smoking than it is to quit heroin. Notably, Keith Richards has quit the heroin . . . but he always has a cigarette on the go. 

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is light up. I don’t wait until my coffee is made.  Indeed, I don’t even wait for morning! I wake up in the middle of the night to smoke and have done so for at least seven years now. There are countless holes burnt into my mattress to attest to my late night cravings. Once I started a mini-fire and I doused the flames with my bare hands.  I can’t afford to keep up with the cost of replacing my bed sheets. They’re all full of holes now.  The last time I bought new sheets I promised myself I would not smoke in bed anymore. That promise was broken within three days, the first burn hole soon to follow. And the first hole made, I could now relax and smoke in bed anew. 

Why did a girl who earned straight A’s in school—who skipped two grades of high school and started university at age 15—take up smoking? People said it then and still say it now: “Janet, you’re too smart to smoke.”