confession

I've been smoking lately.

These past few weeks I've slipped back in to it again, though I couldn't tell you exactly why.

It started with a sudden compulsion, on my way home one day in mid November, the day before going to a friend's mother's memorial service. The day before being confronted, again, with the ex-boyfriend.

He was never fond of it, this unpleasant little habit of mine, and I quit periodically during the years we were together, to greater or lesser effect.

I would quit, and then there would be a fight, and then in a fit of rage and defiance I would run out, slamming doors behind me, to the closest open news stand or bodega. And I would stand outside, sometimes in rain, sometimes in snow, on a corner under a streetlight or overlooking the river, and puff away until I was calm enough to return to the scene of our most recent crimes against each other.

The rage and defiance aren't so much an issue these days, so I'm not sure where this need for some small sense of self-destruction comes from.

It's not something I feel good about.

I remember the first cigarette I ever smoked, one late spring night back in 1993, a few weeks after my father's death, up on the bleachers overlooking my high school's football field.

I remember getting home late, night after night, and dashing in to the bathroom to rub my teeth with toothpaste before going in to kiss my mother goodnight, to let her know that her girl was home safe, that she could sleep soundly.

I thought then that I would stop before I was twenty, call an end to adolescent acting out, but that was half a lifetime ago now.

The other night Nick and I were out for one of our dinners and I was talking to him about the breast lump, and about how, when I found it, my first instinct was to call the ex-boyfriend, looking for something. Comfort, I suppose, or salvation. Nick said his guess was that it wasn't so much about the ex-boyfriend per se, but about the habits, the learned behaviors, we all fall back on in times of crisis.

We left the bar then and I pulled a cigarette and a book of matches out of my coat pocket. Nick glanced over, chuckled, and said, "Well, or there's that."

So yeah, there's that. But there's also the hope - no, the knowledge - that I will move through this too, and come out again on the other side. You know, grow up a little bit more and take responsibility for my actions and all that scary adult stuff.

Man, I think I need a smoke.