lung tar incoming

tw self harm + self harm ment, cigarettes, death, passive suicidality

smoked my first full cigarette today at the ripe age of 25. how about that. do i recommend it: hell no. none of the following is intended to promote or romanticize tobacco. my grandpa’s certainly made himself sick from chewing tobacco and my grandma died of lung complications from smoking earlier in her life. this shit is serious.

that being said the dangers of smoking were obvious to me at a very young age so i always thought i would never, ever do it. i didn’t want to hurt myself. nowadays i don’t mind that idea as much haha

i always planned if i got really old, like if i ever turned 75/80, i’d allow myself to start smoking because at that point do whatever fun shit you want to do for whatever time you have left on the planet. you’ve already taken care of yourself well enough to live longer than most so fuck it, enjoy it. but the way the climate is changing so rapidly + every other of the 700 gorbillion issues with my country slash world only getting worse, tf am i waiting around for. til we reach wet bulb temperatures (people boiling alive in their skin outside because it’s too hot) when i’m like 38? life on a personal and a global scale has been burning to the ground around me since january, i’m beyond the point of being so precious about my future anymore. ideally i’d love to finish college, work my dream job for at least a few years, and find another partner to spend the good parts of life with. after that take me out back like old yeller idgaf

giving myself more than a couple decades feels almost like… a punishment, anyway.  i didn’t even plan on turning 18 much less 25, and now i’m supposed to care about some 70 year old version of me that had to get incredibly lucky in the first place not to die from some car accident or random natural disaster or violent police/transphobe encounter or etc etc etc? i mean i could literally die tomorrow and my spirit would be like aw man, i wish i’d at least smoked one whole cigarette before i had to go. this sounds so stupid and irrational but it’s how i’m honestly thinking rn. i have a long history of letting my fears of bodily harm + death rule my life and i’m so sick of it. it’s really childish but part of this is that i wanted to be able to let myself do something stupid for once.

what’s interesting is that i still have severe health OCD. i still can’t eat certain foods or do certain activities because i’m too worried about contamination & dying. i think the difference is that dying in a car accident isn’t the same as dying from a spoiled bowl of beans. i really don’t want to slowly die from a foodborne illness or prion or brain-eating amoeba or whatever. so at the end of the day even my obsessive fear of death comes down to a desparate craving for control. i do like the idea of controlling the cause of my death much more than the idea of it being completely out of my hands. i guess that might also feed into the passive suicidality huh (or be a symptom of it? chicken or egg?). 

but that’s really what all self harm comes down to right? cutting, scratching, smoking. i do it all because i want to exert some kind of power over myself. over the easiest thing and only thing i feel like i can control sometimes. it’s good to identify these things for when i win the powerball lottery and am able to get into therapy again lmfao

sad sack shit aside. how was the experience. well it was about what you’d expect. i got marlboro golds and they’re kinda tasty, they have this aftertaste like those soda bottle gummies seemingly everybody in the world but me hates. i still feel pretty good from it 15 minutes later. similar to taking my anxiety meds but it works quicker and is much weaker. i would have to cut one pill in half as opposed to taking my usual full 2 (about a 75mg difference!) if i wanted to get this same effect. so from that perspective, especially taking into account the prices of both, smoking is not even close to being as effective and feasible as actual non-harmful medication. so i’m only going to have a cig when i really feel like i need a small boost or when i feel really down. i have an incredibly addictive personality (our whole system tbhh) and like 3 or 4 other active addictions but i can drop them if i really need to and i think at a certain point my OCD will kick back in and say ok enough you’ve gotta stop that. i acknowledge the potential future where i’m addicted to nicotine but i don’t accept it as inevitable, as long as i maintain the right mindset about it. probably every addict has said that in the beginning but like i said idrgaf anymore i’m balling out here trying to recover from being scared for my life every time i leave the house lol. i used to have panic attacks just existing in stores because i was worried about being murdered so being able to smoke a cigarette is actually kind of a small accomplishment for me, in my whole david vs goliath arc i’ve got going rn