Maybe wine doesn't help?

Barely able to sip at my second glass of Merlot from Camelot (30% off at Sunflower Market!), I find myself wanting to go outside constanting. There are spiders at my wrists, itching, scratching at me to open the door, get the cigarettes and smoke that final cigarette, let it all be over.

But you and I both know that one last cigarette will cause me anxiety. I will finish that pack and not have another pack in the house and I will not be able to bum from anyone in the house (b/c one can't smoke, the other one is very opposed to smoking and allergic)-which is quite the good thing. But that doesn't help the itching I feel in my rib cage, the little bird of addiction that keeps singing me a deadly little song of how just one will not hurt.

My mother needs her cigarettes. She smoke fiercely. She furrows her brows. Her skin is ruddy and pink. Her body shapeless. It is from smoking. She started smoking when she was 18. And she is 54 now but looks older to me. She coughs when she laughs. Her voice is gutteral. She replaced all her teeth with dentures due to gum disease, due to smoking.

Her mother smoked cigarettes. She died of lung cancer.

My father's father smoked cigarettes while watching three television sets tuned to three different channels. He died of a heart attack shortly before I was born. I was in germany anyway, it would not have mattered. Or maybe, it would have. Not sure.

I would hate the way she would be so unreasonable, so angry about nothing, then smoke her cigarette in anger in the backyard and complete mood swing, she would be cheerful as rainbows, puppies, hop, but it was all foam at a car wash, playful, soapy, transparent, trite. Her cigarette changed her mood. Her pack came first.

At a recent vacation, as I was about to sit outside to enjoy my dinner and a beer, she goes to light up a cigarette. I ask her to wait until I am done with my dinner, since I hate anyone who smokes during a meal (it is so fucking gross) and she gets up and says "fuck you" and walks away. I don't care. I am just happy I don't have to breathe in toxic smoke while eating fake chicken.

Later that week, I ride my bike to the end of the island and smoke a cigarette in celebration of riding over 9 miles and will have to ride about 9 more to get back to the house. I am a hypocrite. But I am not gross. I hide my smoking.

I want her to quit. She never will. She is too old and she does NOT WANT to, the mother of all reasons (no pun intended).

So I must quit. Again. I succeeded once before, around when I was 21-23. I did crossword puzzles instead. And walked everywhere. And went to the gym. And was surrounded by non-smokers. I began again at UMB. It was an easy way to meet people I would want to meet rather quickly and school mounted before me larger and scarier and more fun than it had before.

But still my wrists hurt, like a skeleton from Creepshow with wispy long white hair and yellow eyes wants me outside with the little leaves littering the sidewalk outside our condo, and just lighituplightituplightitup.