thanks, philip-morris!

predictably, i've been smoking again this week. if i'd really wanted to break the mold i would've gone through this breakup smoke- and alcohol-free. what is different, though, is that for the first time since i was 17 i actually feel guilty for smoking around people. suddenly, having quit smoking and become somewhat of an avid anti-smoker, i find myself thinking as i light up, why am i doing this? i no longer desire a form of slow suicide, no matter how bleak the horizon seems. it's nothing but justification of a dirty, long-kicked habit, but i've given myself a week of smoking, tomorrow being my quit-again deadline. it's my last pack, and i must admit that i'm strangely relieved.

this relief won't come from kicking off the shackles of addiction--i did that a year ago--but instead from not feeling judged by countless 20-something future health professionals. hopkins certainly doesn't make it easy for smokers; we either have to stand in a dirty, butt-ridden corral or between blue lines that read "smoke-free zone" on either side. if it wasn't bad enough that i'm blackening my own lungs, now i have to be reminded that every nonsmoker who walks by me thinks that i'm somehow blowing asbestos into their pearly, healthy ones.

when i was a blue-haired, dog collar-wearing teenager, i didn't seem to notice the glares shot in my direction. smoking was part of my invented, deviant persona, the one that i created to combat the limp-wristed dork with acne and tapered jeans who i wanted so desperately not to be. if i have to be an outsider, i thought, fine. i'll really be an outsider. now, nearly 25, that insecure faggot who sits second chair in his high school orchestra is still in there somewhere, along with the blue-haired queer who makes fun of the orchestra nerds; and finally neither of them wants to die.