My December to Remember: Day Twenty
News: Party City closing all its doors, employees told today is their last day.
WH announced $1B investment in “conserving the Ecuadorian Amazon,” as Biden sends another $1.2B package to Ukraine.
Pennsylvania woman charged with registering dead or “nonexistent” people to vote in violation of election law.
Car drives through Christmas market in Germany, killing one and injuring at least 80.
House passes CR with all Dems voting for it, 34 nay votes were all Republicans, government won’t shut down now (dammit).
Feds raid Tren de Aragua gang hideout in NYC, tracing them using GPS ankle monitor to track them down.
Canadian politician (Trudeau ally apparently) to allow vote on ousting Prime Minister when Parliament returns in January.
House Govt Weaponization Committee releases report on Biden Admin’s weaponized DOJ and government.
This past August marks eight years no cigarettes for me. It was the last time I quit for the final time. I don’t want to say I miss it, but I do. Sometimes I have dreams where I’m smoking and I’m upset when I wake up, thinking I’ve broken my streak. Luckily it’s never true, I know myself better than that. I know that if I have just one cigarette, I will go right back into my pack-a-day habit until I find another round of willpower to quit. So I actively don’t, despite continued cravings to do so. And I certainly get jealous when Dad and my boyfriend light up as we sit in Dad’s living room each Sunday I’m home. But I just don’t smoke anymore. I’ve gone past that stage. There’s no secret smoking anymore. Just a new appreciation in knowing I’ve had enough of this habit and there will never be a reason again for a covert light-up.
College was when my smoking habit really ramped up. I had “tried” a cigarette the moment I turned 18 and could legally buy them. The habit just kind of accelerated when I was away from my parents for the first time and could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I smoked all the time. I’d be watching a show in my dorm room when I’d see someone on the screen take a drag, and I’d need one too. I’d smoke right outside the window, sometimes even right before fencing. One of the trainers even called me out on it during my pre-practice knee wrapping. “You smell like cigarettes,” he told me. I begged him not to say anything to anyone, to which he told me he didn’t care, but that I need to watch myself, as smoking apparently was something Div I athletes just didn’t do.
Didn’t matter to me. I was fully addicted to smoking by that point, rapidly approaching a pack-a-day habit. It wasn’t until one day where a friend and I were outside the dorm smoking when I saw my fencing coach approaching from down the sidewalk, en route to the gym right across the street. I hid my pack between my thighs as I sat cross legged and tried handing off my lit butt to my friend, but it was too late. He came over to confront me as my friend slunk away, admonishing me for smoking and how it was against NCAA rules, and how he could kick me off the team for even doing so. He even reached in and grabbed the pack from between my legs, which skeeved me out and annoyed me because it was a fresh pack. I shuffled off to practice a few hours later and was required to speak with my student athlete counselor afterwards. She told me there was no rule about tobacco and it was a team-by-team thing, saying he couldn’t kick me off, but encouraged me to quit anyway. I also told her about feeling uncomfortable with his “reach in,” which probably helped save my butt from being further in trouble. Either way, my smoking was exposed, out in the open for all to see, and there was no more putting the rabbit back in the hat about it.
Obviously I didn’t quit. I needed a few more slights of hand in order to keep on smoking. I didn’t light up outside the dorm anymore, and I didn’t bring a pack with me on overnight fencing trips. My covert operations worked and I was never confronted again, but willingly putting myself in the secretive position wasn’t ideal either. Having to hide all the time was exhausting in its own right, and I just wanted to be free without the runaround and deception.
Optically, a Div I athlete on a scholarship being a smoker isn’t a good look. But it was my cross to bear. If I wanted to willingly make myself more winded by inhaling tobacco, that was my choice. Just like its these peoples’ choices to willingly tug the wool over everyone’s eyes. But I don’t think we’ll have to deal with that much longer. Everyone’s choices are out in the open now. The smoke has dissipated and now we get to see the stripped-down reality of what’s really going on. If you look at everything as one big elaborate stage play, things get easier to digest. It’s less exhausting that way. Saves the sanity. Just know that if you see that big cloud of deception still trying to blow its way in our faces, it’s not coming from me. I’m not the deceiver here. Not anymore.
