Ramble

My stomach is the worst!

I really thought that by this point I wouldn’t be writing about it anymore.  At least, less  At least, it wouldn’t be throwing me flareups that wipe out whole days of my life every so often. 

I planned to go to my first musical event this past weekend…a cover band of a group I love, at my favorite bar.  Did I make it?  No, of course not.  Why, oh why, would my pyloric muscle ever allow such things?!  FUN?! NEVER!!

So, after feeling salty about that all day on Sunday, I woke up feeling a little better this morning, but also tired of worrying about my health.  However, I am making major health strides despite my stupid stomach.  For one, my sciatica is much improved due to the exercises I have been doing.  And speaking of exercise and diet related things, I am officially the thinnest I have ever been in my entire life.  I don’t suggest my diet of protein shakes and jello, but hey, it got results, I guess.  I do indeed fit into that bathing suit I mentioned some months ago.  That’s a nice thing.

I mean, I really still don’t give a crap about my weight but it’s nice to accomplish a goal, y’know?

And then the other health thing, in which I attempt to quit smoking.  Again.  They say the average smoker quits seven times before the big one…if that’s so I’m plugging along on attempt number five right now.  Hopefully it’s a good, long run.  In the meantime, I’m on the patch and having crazy dreams.  No, don’t tell me to take it off at night…I often wake up in the night wanting a smoke, so I have to keep it on then,  The dreams are actually mostly fun, not scary or anything, but the realism is something of a brain tease.

So, I’m losing weight and quitting smoking and still my stomach insists on behaving the way it does every time I try to do something fun.  One doc says it’s a fluke.  Another doc says it takes time for it to heal.  I don’t think either of them know what they’re talking about anymore.

I’m sitting in my desk with a pain in my shoulder as I type because I am simply not used to sitting at my desk and typing, as I have been away from the writing for so long.  My blog is in shambles, my poetry practically nonexistent, and while I did drop 350 words in the WIP the other day, that’s it for months now.  But this morning I found a poem.

Just a little something about a fish that I wrote while out one afternoon and forgot about.  Just a note on my phone, that I polished up and put into pretty words and saved in my poetry file.  It gave me a little hope, much like the fishies I wrote the poem about do.

That’s what I need to do!  Go fishing.

Anyway…thanks for listening to my ramble today.  There wasn’t much else on the agenda and I just had to get all these little thoughts out of my mind.

Happy Monday.

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Cigarette Daydreams

It was a warm November evening, unseasonable for Buffalo.  Warm enough that we stood without coats in the driveway, and I finally realized what that peer pressure my teachers had warned me of was all about.  See, it’s not like they were bad kids, some terrible influence I had been warned of by everyone from parent to policeman.  They were just three girls from school.  Not even from the clique of girls who had, by my Junior year, been completely expelled for various rule-breaking activities.  These were just three girls I had met a year previous, and we were still becoming friends.  They were fun and nice and I liked them, and that’s probably why I took a cigarette when Jaime offered me one.

I have often said that if I could return to any point in time, it would be that one.  I would march up that driveway, smack that cigarette out of my hand, and scream at those four girls loud enough to wake the dead.  I would have threatened to cut off their pinkies, a warning I issued to my sister at the tender age of four.  I’m happy to report that she is not a smoker, and still has all ten fingers.

Smoking became part of my identity.  One of the reasons that I went to D’Youville was because they had a smoking lounge at the time.  The indoor smoking ban of 2003 hurt me on a spiritual level, as
I could no longer smoke in the bars I wasn’t supposed to be in anyway.  Smoking was my way of being social-it gave you the courage to talk to a stranger (“got a light?”) and the best conversations with my friends always happened over a cigarette.

I tried a few times over the years to quit, and often went months without a cigarette.  Something always happened though, something that sent my anxiety spiraling, and led to me lighting up.  I also found that the amount of pressure I put on myself to quit was astounding.  Every time I would cave and have a cigarette, I would feel like a total failure.

So, when I decided to quit once and for all and forever, I took away the prospect of the “last cigarette.”  I always told myself I would have a last cigarette, slap on the patch, and then never have one again.  I know now, through trial and error, that this plan does not work.  This is what ends with me depressed that I’ve fallen off the wagon, and running out to buy a pack.  Instead, yes, I am sure I will have another cigarette in my lifetime.  Probably a few.  However, I never intend to make a habit of it again.  I will get back up, dust myself off, and not smoke a cigarette the next day.

I quit because of my health.  I loved smoking, just about as much as I hated it.  It’s a difficult connection, a smoker and their cigarette.  It’s a love-hate relationship.  I have found myself, more than once, gazing longingly at Mark’s cigarette, dangling from his fingers, its blue-gray smoke curling towards the ceiling…I want one right now as I type this.  I’ll want one again in a few minutes when I start to edit this blog, as a fresh smoke was something of a reward to me for finishing my work.  I will probably always want a cigarette a little bit, but I know I don’t need one, and that makes all the difference.  Instead I chew my gum and think about how nice it would be if I really could go back in time and beat that 15-year-old’s ass.  Such stupid, stupid children we were.