Ode to Nicotine

My Marlboro Lights and I just celebrated our two year anniversary on Valentine's Day. Has it really only been two years? It feels as though my cigarettes have been with me my entire life, there to make it all better when everything just sucks. I spent years convincing myself that I shouldn't smoke. I know that I don't have the willpower to quit. However, I have no desire to quit. At all, whatsoever. I love that first smoke when I wake up, the one that I light as soon as I get into my car after a hectic day at work. I love my 3rd good night cigarette, because one is just never enough. I love inhaling each and every puff, watching the smoke swirl around my head. I love pissing off all the people who don't smoke and made it illegal to smoke in any public place in Illinois. Those bastards...

Most of all, I love that when I get stressed out, when everything is just too much to handle, all I need to do is take a smoke break and then I'm calmer.

Sure, it's a $5 a day habit. It stinks. It requires me to go outside in below zero weather just to get that fix. But ya know? I still love each and every puff. It's hell on my body, but that was the point.

You see, I started smoking to shave a few years off. It was at a time when everything sucked and I just wanted it all to stop. But when I started to freak out because I had no future, no money, almost nothing that meant anything to me, I had my cigarettes. They were there for me. They're a crutch, I know. At least, they were. Now, they're like an old friend. Only more dependable.

I can see myself as one of those old people taking a puff from a cigarette and then a breath from an oxygen tank someday. I'll still enjoy every puff.

We all have to die someday. I might as well enjoy it.