First off, on the subject of me missing last night's blog, Shut up.
Second I have come to a very stunning conclusion. Cigarettes do not cause death as the Surgeon General has decided. No, on the contrary, cigarette's save lives. They save lives. Lots of them.
Now I'm not much of a smoker; asthma prevents me from really testing my limits because I seriously don't want another lecture from another doctor on how I should give up altogether to breathe better. Trust me when I tell you that many many MANY people are alive today because I was able to take a puff a cig.
I started in high school. Here and there, it depended on who I was hanging out with. Most of my friends were on the straight and narrow and the thought of a cigarette... ew! Like even! But every now and then I might snatch a few minutes with someone that used a bathroom pass to sit in the stairways and puff close to the door. Okay, Heather. I smoked with Heather. One or two others after she left Ocean but pretty sure that's where it started.
And in a world where I often felt like the token black in the room, cigarettes helped A LOT. No one was going to die in high school. But a lot of people were spared the ever hurtful barrage of venom dripping tirades whirling through my head.
College was very little different. Band people smoked. College kids smoked. Black college kids smoked black and milds. Don't ask me what's in one because I really don't want to lie to you. More than a few times Mr. Grey was spared the poison in my head because I was able to find a cigarette. Randy hated it. And while he was giving me sex I stopped because let's face it. Replace anger with orgasms and who needs nicotine?? Seriously. I will take nicotine after orgasms but truthfully it's been so long since the orgasm that I'll stick with the nicotine. Now when he went away to join the ever expanding cast of Dumbasses in a tin can a.k.a the Navy, (Ever witnessed a cult that had matching uniforms and a health plan? Their mascot is an old man with a serious what not to wear problem.) I once again picked up my lovely little white friend but I also picked up his much larger brother, the bottle. Yes I drank in high school, hell I drank in middle school and as far back as one year old. I lived in Germany. They MAKE beer for children. But in college the pain of what I thought was my very first real boyfriend (turns out he was a not very friendly fuck friend) going away to make a man out of himself (It didn't work) was significantly less if I had a cup of very bad liquid in one hand and a 'cancer' stick in the other. Also, after the summer before my ill fated sophomore year, the pain of realizing that I had passed on a possibly very good, albeit very short, man in favor of Randy was dulled considerably with this method.
And then I got pregnant. And I'm not stupid, I know you don't smoke when you're pregnant. You don't smoke, you don't drink. Also I had to move back home with my mother who had no idea that I did either and I worked at Value City. It was not one of those really happy pregnancies. I was angry. Angry at Randy for knocking me up. Angry at myself for letting it happen, angry at my mom because she never let me forget for one day that my life was more or less over, angry at the job that put an angry little cuss like me in charge of customer service simply because my mom could do it. I was further angry at Randy's mother who's wedding toast THE NIGHT OF MY 'WEDDING' TO RANDY was, "Well, I guess I gotta keep you now." As in she legally couldn't get rid of me. Angry that I was once again in New fucking Jersey. Angry that I didn't follow through on the very nice church that offered to get me into community college, set me up with housing, and find me a job with the only codicils being that I continued my education, I continued going to church, and I keep my child. (hindsight is a real bitch!) All because I listened when they told me that we don't have unwed mothers in my family and that I needed to fix my mistake and marry him even though when he asked and I accepted WHEN I WAS NOT PREGNANT, he reneged saying he only proposed because he was missing me.
Hi! You were looking for one of the royal princesses of the fair land of Dumbass??? Right here.
After I had the boy, I could barely wait to get a cigarette in my hot little fingers again, but I didn't count on one thing. We lived with a bunch of nosy assholes. No one said a word in Dahlgren about it because I took long walks. Long ones. The corner store sold loose cigarettes and I discovered that if I went to take the trash out and hit there, by the time I circled back around to our apartment, I was done. If I bought a coke at the same time you could neither smell or taste it on me, not that Randy didn much tasting. When we moved to Newport News, we had his godfather living with us. I was told it was to help me out with the baby but first off the man was so damn dirty he washed his underwear in the sink where I washed food and dishes WHEN WE HAD A WASHING MACHINE. When he got a piece of money he went and got beer and he turned violent but lest I say something to anyone about the fact that this grown man used to hit me when he got intoxicated. Oh no, then he turned the story and said that he didn't hit me, he just knocked my cigarette out of my hand and I took it too personally.
Besides mothers and father all over the world, who has ever been able to knock that precious cigarette out of someone's hand and live to tell the story? Exactly, my point. If Rich had knocked the cig out of my hand he'd've been dead. The truth, he was right there with me on the stoop smoking. But he was family and I was just the wife so who do you think Randy believed?? He got off and I got yelled at by the mighty mighty husband for smoking and he knew how to get me because he claimed I was a bad mother for doing it. "What kind of mother smokes??"
Uhm... yours. Marijuana to be exact. Several times a day. While small children were in the house.
So I stopped smoking. We started fighting and I started eating. And somehow he we okay with this. He'd go out to sea, his house would be taken care of, his godfather would be fed, the people living in our house were fed, he would come home, we'd have sex, we'd get in a massive fight, I would eat, he would leave for another deployment and the whole shebang would start all over again.
Somewhere in there we had two more kids, I moved back in with my mom, we moved to a different part of Virginia and I pretended for all who wanted to watch the show that shit was okay. I was married, I had my kids, I was happy.
I spent YEARS wanting a cigarette.
Moved to California where he could further exert his manliness and make everyone think that we had one of those awesome marriages. Serena was the only one that understood me at first because her marriage was shit. We stood on our respective back porches passing cigarettes and coke. Well she gave me a cigarette, we each had a coke, and passed the vodka back and forth.
Then she went away. But it was okay because I got Carrie! Yea for Carrie! If my life was dysfunctional it was totally okay because she could top mine any given day, she drank, she smoked, she didn't much care if I snagged her cigarette once in awhile and we drank and best of all... our husbands shared a love of things electronic. It was great! They babysat each other like all the time. Leaving us to be mom and women.
But like all good things in life, the navy said we must move back to Dahlgren.
But again, life looked at me and said, "It's okay, I took you from the land of love and the people who understood you and brought you to hell, but I'm giving you Patty and Chelly." And cats. Lots of cats.
But marriage was just one thing I couldn't stand any longer so I had to leave the land of boozy Fridays and Phase 10.
And return to New Fucking Jersey.
I smoke, I drank and I did it alone. I did have a bitof fun. There were friends in there but I never really let any of them know that pretty much every night after I put my kids to bed, I cried. Cried hard. Because my life was shit.
I made the choice to move to NC. i was going to start over in the country. But Mom moved down here with me and my pipe dream of moving to the country that wasn't exactly the country because there would be a city and a Patty nearby turned into living in the city. Or the burbs at least.
I just want to wiggle my toes in grass. I just want to sit on a hill and watch the sun go down. Or come up, I'm flexible.
Most importantly I wanted to find a guy that wanted to do the same.
"I'm moving to Raleigh." Four words. From the ex. Life... void.
"I'm moving to New Mexico." Five words. From the ex. Life reinstated.
"So what should we do today?" Six words. From the mother. Life voided.
"I'm moving back to North Carolina. To Charlotte." Eight words. From the ex. Life null void and reassigned.
Countless gallons of alcohol and countless cigarettes later we are arrive at today.
No man. No grass between my tootsies. The man that lives near the grass my tootsies long for, doesn't want me. My tootsies never see the light of day because they stay crammed in my work shoes. My boss's boss, doesn't appreciate me at all. My boss, yes, her boss, not at all.
I just want my grass.
Until I get my grass however, I keep a pack of cigarettes in my car. And when the stupid people come at me, or my mom, or my ex, I smoke. And I don't cuss them out, or threaten them.
So Smoking doesn't kill. Smoking saves lives. On the regular.
The surgeon General has probably never had a stressful day in their lives.
