THE DEMON THAT IS CIGARETTES

I want to quit smoking. My doctor wants me to quit smoking. My boyfriend wants me to quit smoking. I feel like a giant crack addict. Every day is the last day that I am going to smoke. The first 15 minutes of yoga, when I am breathing like an 80-year-old asthmatic in a room full of cats, I swear to myself that I am never going to smoke another cigarette in my life. When I run up the stairs to grab the phone and feel like my lungs are going to crawl out of my ass, I pray to every power higher than myself for the will power to never touch another cigarette again. Still, I smoke close to a pack a day. I feel like a hypocrite every year when I do the “Race for the Cure” and then smoke on the way home. Every time I buy pink light bulbs or donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I feel like Judas the Betrayer. And still, I smoke close to a pack a day. Like an alcoholic, I use cigarettes as my crutch. Like a smack fiend, I become moody and irritable with every attempt to break the cycle. I sit in meditation pose and imagine my life without cigarettes: no sitting alone at the bar while my friends enjoy each others’ company; an extra $20 or so a week for rent; no lung cancer or breast cancer or emphysema. And then I step outside to have a smoke. My hands stink, my teeth are yellow, and my boyfriend makes me brush my teeth before he will kiss me, and still I step outside to have a smoke. Addiction is the devil, and cigarettes are my personal demon. And I am going outside to have a smoke.