Burn Down Another Night

I am trying to quit smoking again. My last cigarette was Monday night at approximately 11pm so it's been 48 hours. I've done this before - hour 72 is going to suck, unless I light one up.

It's time. As my mother told me today, I've developed a cough. Who knows what the inside looks like?

I have a weird history with smoking.

My father smoked from little kid until a year after, that's right, a year after I was born. My parents were both children of tobacco farmers in rural North Carolina. My mother never smoked.

I did not start smoking until I was almost 35 years old. I thought that it was those kids who started when they were 13 that are fucked (and you are), so I started to bum cigarettes.

Then I bought a pack. Right around December 31, 1999. New Year's Resolution - to start smoking. Twisted, fucked up and odd. Perfect. More a story than anything else - and the resolution was to smoke for just one year. That's a non-smoker talkin' there, boy.

It didn't really take until September 12, 2001. Then it took. Hard.

I smoked regularly until Spring of 2006 when my then girlfriend and I went hiking up a "mountain" in Woodstock, NY. I got winded. The next day I threw away my remaining pack (smokes still in it) and quit cold turkey.

For 18 months. Until that girlfriend and I broke up. November 2007. And I purposely bought a pack and haven't looked back, even though in my village, they cost upwards of $13.00. And most of my friends smoke or at least bum them from me and smoke. And most of the people I've dated smoke with just a few exceptions.

Anyway.

I spent the majority of the weekend and the last almost four years smoking way too much. Excuses, explanations, habitual drug use, and that sweet relief for the jones that comes with that first puff.

I'm gonna try to quit now, once again. Key words: Gonna Try. It's so fucking ridiculous that one can look for support on Blogger or on Facebook, by writing and/or posting about it, but one can. I am.

I might buy a pack tomorrow. Don't judge me if I do.

But knowing me, I probably won't. For a while at least...

Cover Stars: CD & JG by CW. One of the last cigarettes.
Headlining Band: The Leaving Trains. The first The Ass Kittens cover.

James M. Graham, Website
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James M. Graham, Monograph