**Another piece written within 30 minutes as an exercise for my writing class. Honestly I had no idea what to write but at the end I'll explain a bit of what this piece means.... Not my best work but it's something I guess... I got good critiques for it but I don't really understand why.
“You smoke too much” This isn’t the first or last time a boy has told me that. The cheap pack of who-knows-if-it’s-cardboard that holds my brief escape of reality shaped in pathetic little sticks sits awkwardly in my sweaty palms.
“Why?” I already know why.
“Because it’s unhealthy and gross to kiss you after you smoked like half a pack in a day.” Nothing new of an explanation as to why someone should stop smoking. Addiction, disgusting, unhealthy— I’ve heard them all. What they don’t know is that by telling me those things they are calling me those things. An addict, a gross little woman who holds onto cigarettes like they are her last saving grace. It’s not as dramatic as they think.
“Okay well no.” There’s so many reactions to my blatant rejection of their supposedly selfless wishes for me to give up smoking. With Oliver, he just sighed and changed the topic. With Christopher, he took my pack away and told me to try CBD instead. After they leave, I always go to the smoke shop downstairs and buy another pack with cash, regardless if I’m out or not and they’re never there to stop me.
“Then I’ll break up with you.” I laugh at his pathetic attempt to make me do something I don’t want to. This is a new one, an ultimatum. I expected one of the boys to tell me that at one point, but I think they all know that it’ll just make me want to smoke more. Maybe I did want to stop smoking, but telling me to stop and reminding me that life goes on doesn’t really help. It’s not like I don’t know that I’m apparently suspect to childbirth complications and lung cancer from the photos that are on the packs.
“Okay then I’ll stop smoking.” Play into his little wants. These men always want me to get better, to go to therapy, stop smoking, go vegan, improve myself… How can I do these for other people and not myself? That just defeats the whole purpose and concept of self improvement. He seems elated by my easy defeat, and it only makes me want to laugh even more at how easy this man thinks it is to make me do something for him.
“I’m glad. I know it’ll be hard but I’ll help you!”
Silence. They always go silent when they realize I’m more than just a girl to like, I’m a girl to fight, argue, and hate too. That’s normally when they leave me. In a perfect world, our conversation would go like this:: just leave me and find himself a girl who eats quinoa and only smokes weed occasionally as a recreational drug.
“Why do you do this all the time?”
“Do what?”
“You know what”
“Why do I have to answer you on that?”
“You know you’re just killing yourself by smoking”
“You know I want to kill myself.”
Silence. They always go silent when they realize I’m more than just a girl to like, I’m a girl to fight, argue, and hate too. That’s normally when they leave me. After a few months of seeing the cracks behind my makeup, they deem it as "too much" and skip away to find someone a little less depressing. In a perfect world, our conversation would go like this:
“Why do you hurt yourself like this?”
“Because I’ve been hurt enough times by myself I don’t need other people to do it for me.”
“Wow…. Really? Well then okay. I’ll just be there for you when you need me and I won’t leave you just because you’re overwhelming.”
“Thanks, I love you.”
“You're welcome, I love you too.”
Instead, he sighs and picks up his coat, and gets out of my apartment. The room doesn’t feel any different and nor do I. Downstairs I go, to buy another pack and advocate for my shitty tendencies that apparently drive people away from me.
**A/N The purpose of this piece was to write about a principle we care a lot about while making it into a physical item. My personal motto is my own interpretation of self-preservation: the idea of doing things you want and being hurt by yourself instead of having outside forces manipulate you. Hence, the narrator smokes as a hobby but it's made into a larger problem by the people around her while she's constantly told it's bad for her. I also personally find it so that people are turned off by my beliefs. It's useful when they are going through troubles ie breakups or whatnot and empowers them but when it comes to my personal issues they think of me as self-destructive... Which I am, but it's really just the aftermath of radicalizing my personal beliefs. I refuse to be broken by other people, just as much as I refuse to be healed by other people. And so, I'll keep breaking myself and I'll decide for myself when I will get better. Anyways, if I had more time I probably could've polished this more or made it a bit more... Interesting and less annoying (I find the narrator to be a lazy version of myself) but alas I wrote this in thirty minutes so there wasn't much to do only an idea that I was desperately trying to write out.
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