Beautiful Ashes.

I was walking down the street during rush hour and saw a woman smoking a cigarette while standing at the side of a busy sidewalk. I noticed a fourth of her cigarette was in ash. It caught my eye like, a delicate paper mache would. One little movement and the ashy tail would scatter. For me, everything about smoking is a fine line between glamour and a terrible death.

Ever since I saw Cruella de Vil I knew I wanted to be a smoker. I didn't care that she was evil. I didn't care that she killed puppies. The only two vivid images that still come to mind, are black and white hair and grey smoke. I tried to smoke a pen for weeks after seeing the film. When I was a little girl I would sit with my eighty year old grandma at her kitchen table, mesmerized by the fancy french circles she would exhale after each puff of her cigarette. I could have sworn she once made smoke come out of her ears but after years of trying, I never could manage that task.

I knew I was going to be a smoker before I knew I would smoke. I would buy the candy cigarettes and walk around like a mad woman pretending that I just needed to get one little puff to get through that tough day of first grade. At the age of twelve, I began smoking butts with my neighborhood friends. It was pretty gross, we would go digging through the ash tray my elder brother had made of my parents garden and would look for the longest remains. We would then hide in my garage and commence experimenting with inhalation. I still can feel that light-headedness that came along with a full breath in, it was brilliant. But then I started hanging out with "good" kids and I dropped the habit before ever actually smoking an unused cigarette.

But then that fateful day came. I was sixteen and had just gotten my license. I got behind the wheel of my brother's car and was looking around in the glove compartment when I spotted a Marlboro Red box. Upon opening it, I found one single, untouched cigarette. I couldn't resist. The temptation was too great. I was driving by myself and had the opportunity to have one hand on the wheel and the other casually smoking. I don't remember really liking it, however I do remember trying to throw the cigarette out the window and feeling a burning sensation on my back. The wind had blown the cigarette back in to car and it had landed between the car seat and myself. I later played dumb when my mother inquired about the burn mark.

From then on it became a thing. I would sneak smokes here and there. I had a connection at the local grocery store so I didn't need to be eighteen to buy. Smoking was my rebellion, I never drank or lied to my parents, but I lit up like a chimney. Over the years it went from being my statement to an incessant need. The anxiety that came along with an empty pack of cigarettes was equal to that of almost getting hit by a car. After college I was so poor at times that I didn't know how to afford my next meal but if need be, I would put the cigs on the credit card. I began getting sick every month like clock work. I would open my closet at home and my coat would emit the smell of an ash tray.

Enough was enough. I needed to quit, but how? How do you quit something you love, something you live for? I didn't know. I was desperate. I picked up the book "The Easy Way To Stop Smoking." You smoke while reading the book and when you finish you stop smoking. The book is approximately two hundred pages, or so. It took me three months to read. The first day off you would have thought somebody amputated my left arm and I'm left handed. I didn't know how to function. There was no hope left in my life. No room for joy without the light. I lasted for about seven weeks and then read the book again. The second time, was the last time. I did it, after about six years and thousands of dollars, I quit smoking.

I now find it hard to believe that I ever smoked at all. I'm appalled by the smell and find smokers walking in front of me incredibly rude and inconsiderate. How could someone be so thoughtless? Vickie, how could you be so thoughtless?

Taking this little walk down memory lane makes me so relieved to not need to smoke anymore. I do believe my quality of life is much better and I really don't miss it. But there is also a part of me that looks back on those stubborn days of addiction with pride. I don't know why, maybe the fact that I actually stuck to something or that I was doing something I wasn't supposed to, that was bad for me. Or maybe it just forced me to see the beauty in the ashes of an unflicked cigarette.