Recently, I have been trying to take charge of my vices. I’ve never been a person who enjoys things “in moderation.” If I drink alcohol, it’s not cute little sips. It’s drinking to get drunk and fall into some bushes, having to be dragged down the hallway back to my apartment. It’s when smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is less than my usual. It’s week-long benders and functional addiction. Enjoy responsibly, the fine print of beer ads warns you, the minuscule text just barely visible below the visage of a crisp, chilled bottle dotted with condensation. Moderation. I’ll never be a moderate person, though. I’m the type that likes to go to extremes. I like the yin and yang, being sober or being intoxicated. Well, intoxication hasn’t been doing me too many favors lately. The different layers of having multiple addictions intermingle, as well. Trying to cut off different vices can start feeling like you’re trying to disarm a bomb. Cut the red wire, or is it the blue one? If I fuck it up, the results could be catastrophic.
After a decade of smoking cigarettes, I have decided to kick the habit. My dad has been smoking for over half his life, and he’s still alive, but he’s worn well beyond his years. No offense when you read this, Dad, but I don’t want to look like you when I’m your age. So, quitting smoking is now a part of a larger self-overhaul I am trying to embark on this winter. Activating my winter arc, if you will. I’m hoping that if I take the next few months to improve myself and level up, I’ll stop meeting as many people who do everything they possibly can to ruin my life. Or, those people who are just such bad influences on me that I ruin my life in order to please them. It’s some fucked up shit, and I don’t want to do that anymore. What’s that quote everyone is always saying Albert Einstein said? Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So here I am, trying to get a different result.
I’ve been walking a lot lately, because depression has a harder time hitting a moving target. When I was younger, I loved to explore. For some reason, I have always really enjoyed walking to places that you’d typically only see driving past. Railroad yards, ditches by the interstate, run-down industrial parks. Call me crazy, because I truly just might encounter Machete McStabface on one of these excursions someday. But I do carry a taser. Sometimes, if I let myself imagine it, I can almost hear the angry buzzing of my taser when I use it to counter-attack some rapey weirdo. Maybe it smells like burning hair when you do it. Maybe you can hear your assailant’s flesh sizzling as the electrical current enters their body. I think the nicotine withdrawal is causing me to daydream about violence. It’s never not on my mind that creeps like to hang around out by the BNSF rail yard.
The lack of nicotine makes me want to just throw things across the room and scream. So, I leave the house instead. I have found a spot by the river that I particularly like, so I go there and write in a journal. What the fuck is the matter with me? is the first thing that occurs to me to write down, every time without fail. I have to stop myself from making that the first sentence in every entry. Sometimes it takes me a while to think of something more constructive to say about myself in this little pink book. The empty pages seem so wide open, waiting and ready for some deep words of self-reflection to be written down in them. What the fuck is the matter with me? Nope. Try to think of something a little more encouraging to write down. Finally, I start to write a list of things that are the fucking matter with me, not to shame myself, but because they are things I want to improve on.
I have always been so focused on romantic relationships and finding a partner. It’s always been treated like some sort of DEFCON-4 level emergency, for some reason. When I’m alone? MAYDAY, MAYDAY, RED ALERT, my brain on fire, my heart soaking wet. Nuclear meltdowns every time I find myself alone with my thoughts. Sometimes I do feel quite radioactive, like the aftermath of my volatile expressions is corroding the emotional states of those around me. The irony is not lost on me; all I really want is to find a partner, but my lack of having a partner is making me an even less desirable suitor in the dating world.
I hate when people say you have to love yourself to find a solid relationship. I just picture myself in some therapist’s office, tearing my hair out and bashing my head against the wall when they say that stuff. It’s true, and that is why I hate it. Just love yourself! Give me a break. It’s such a bullshit, empty platitude that only those who have never struggled will share with you like it’s some earth-shattering revelation that no one has ever heard before. What the fuck is “loving yourself”? I picture some lady in a shaving cream commercial, grinning and looking radiant in the shower as she shaves her already-hairless legs. Oh, she is so beautiful, surely she loves herself, right? Is that what it is to love yourself? To feel beautiful? To be beautiful as you perform your hygienic self-care rituals? When I try to do that, I feel like that scene from Euphoria where Cassie obsessively gets ready for four hours every morning so that Nate Jacobs will notice her.
I’m trying to reframe this sort of bottomless pit desperation within myself as a good thing. It’s always a good idea to work with what I have, rather than against it, even if it isn’t necessarily healthy. I’ve started to think about it a little more than just “loving myself.” Those words just ring hollow and make me feel stupid, like I’m obviously just doing something wrong, and that’s why I don’t love myself. What an idiot, it comes so naturally to everyone else, why can’t I figure it out?
Exploring has helped. Something about sitting there and listening to the water of the “mile wide and inch deep” South Platte River rushing by has helped me start to break through. Is this what meditation is? I’ve come to the conclusion that if I want someone good to come into my life, I need to be just as good as I expect them to be, if not better. So, I’ve created a list of goals for myself to fulfill before I will allow myself to begin another foray into the dating world.
I’m going to start HRT later this month, and I’m going to start exercising more. These long walks to Globeville and back aren’t a bad start. I’m going to find a really good therapist and work hard to learn about healthy attachment and shedding layers of traumatic experiences. Another goal, which I have already started and not by choice, is to detox from social media. I don’t have an iPhone anymore, and since my cheap Android replacement repulses me with its laggy, buggy software and plastic touchscreen, I haven’t touched Facebook in a week. Instagram, viewed only on my computer a few times a week, is on thin ice as well.
Most importantly, I’m going to quit smoking. That’s where this all began, this striving for self-improvement. “Quitting smoking is harder than quitting heroin,” people keep helpfully reminding me when I tell them about this goal. Well, I’ve worked hard the past six months to curb my meth addiction, and I’ve finally reached a point in my recovery journey where it feels good to be back to normal. If I can do that, I can do whatever it is I need to. And right now, I need to go cold turkey.
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