or i can be straight with y'all (if there really is an audience; who is my intended audience? do i intend to have one?) straight like wine before reading results in a lack of reading. straight like i just spent something like $20 on wkuk, newsradio (season 1), and to the teeth on itunes (i would put some sort of link here, but you can figure it out yourself. or at least more quickly than i can). i don't really want to go to sleep. i don't really want to read. i don't really want to do anything. well, maybe smoke a cigarette.
speaking of that trash. i will be honest and say that i have, strangely enough, had a total of zero real ("real" as in physiological desire, not "oh people are smoking i probably should too") cigarette cravings since i started graduate school. funny because before i came here, after trying to quit more than twice (and succeeding for brief stints of time), i had resigned myself to being a smoker until i had finished my ph.d ('cause who in their right mind tries to quit in the middle of this shit, right?) but, somehow, my body just stopped wanting them. i don't know how to explain it. and i've tried (again, counter-intuitively) to pick it back up. yes, that's right. i wish i wanted to smoke. i wish i could give back these 10 lbs. i gained since i quit. i wish it made me feel good. i wish i didn't get headaches just thinking about cigarettes. i wish i could get that rush, that release, that feeling like jesus fucking mother of god this is exactly what i needed right now.
okay, so i'll level. you're right, i don't miss a lot of it. i don't miss the coughing, the lung-hacking, the getting sick every other week but still needing that nicotine. but overall, i miss what it was to me. i miss being a smoker. even with all the social stigma. i miss having cigarettes in my purse or sharing those miniature moments of acknowledgment with people who smoke the same kind of cigarettes. and when a cigarette hits the spot, boy does it hit the spot. but without the craving, the cigarette means nothing. so, i guess what i really wish is to have the craving without the addiction. woe is me. (i do have other, bigger, more legitimate concerns in my life, i promise. this just happens to be something i ponder occasionally).
i think i'm done.
2 comments:
yayy, welcome!
i think that cigarette craving thing is kinda like how i've been feeling about being in a relationship for a long time. i wish i still had ridiculous butterflies and love-euphoria, but i don't really want the crushing uncertainties, disappointments, et al. and you can't make yourself feel stuff, anyhow, so it's moot.
but i've never been addicted to cigarettes, so i don't really know.
i'm linking you...
<3
Hmm...I'm tempted to say both are things you want only when you don't have them, but that's too pat of an answer. I have to say, although smoking was fun, I don't miss the cravings. They came to structure my life, living from smoke to smoke, incrementally, always thinking ahead to the next opportunity to step outside. And when that opportunity came too late, it wasn't fun and I wasn't fun to be around.
BJP, as for what you say, butterflies and euphoria are totally different. We all want euphoria. But I don't think butterflies are fun when you have them, although we recognize them as something important that almost everyone goes through (although I'm tempted to try to historicize our experience of them). Maybe they are like cravings in that when you finally get to smoke, they just make that final consummating experience all the more intense, but if your pack is continually empty, it's just pretty unpleasant. Though that one bummed smoke when you are just fiending is fucking amazing, right?
I had a longstanding debate with someone who would know about whether or not you can make yourself feel stuff, and she finally convinced me that you can to some degree. Smiling can make you feel happy, for example, and we all know how easy it is to manipulate your mood with the right music.
So can you feel the euphoria without the crushing uncertainty and the risk of disappointment? How much can you enjoy a cigarette that you weren't craving? This is the problem with thinking of desire as a lack that needs to be fulfilled rather than as a positive, productive experimental force that creates social connections. Of course, in taking this course, the separate governing "self" that would theoretically make you feel stuff itself disappears. You are becoming a Body Without Organs.
Maybe I do intellectualize my emotions...
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