Driving past my old high school recently I couldn’t help but get a little sense of de ja vu seeing the little kids outside smoking. I mean that was me many years back. While it has been six months since my last cigarette and I have grown to hate the smell a part of me understands.
When your world as a kid has no consistency or is so topsy-turvy there is something extremely comforting in a habit. There is something comforting in sharing it with others. It is a consistent break, a consistent motion, a consistent feeling.
I notice that even as I removed cigarettes the need for a certain amount of ritual remains in my life. My lists, my routines. I think these remain as by-product of growing up with so much uncertainty of what the immediate and long term future might hold.
In a sense I tried to even out the wild swings in daily expectations with some sort of normalcy. With the small things I could control, often to my own determent.
I wonder what I tell a younger version of me. How I would help them make better decisions.
Then I remember a younger version of me wouldn’t have listened anyway.
1 comment:
I never smoked because I was rebelling again being like my parents but I remember my high school used to actually have a smoking lounge for students who smoked. (Talk about dating yourself!)
It was outside and kids used to somehow find time to smoke between classes-every class. I'd be curious to see how many of them still smoke-and worse-how many of them have cancer because they smoked SO much in high school.
Glad you're smoke free now.
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