It's been a while since I was alone like this. Jazz in the background, soft lights, candles, wine and cigarettes with me and my thoughts. It's an encouraging ambiance to think of my pressing struggles: my father diagnosed with cancer, Alex leaving very soon, my love-hate relationship with creating, my formless ideas, money, and the lack of it. One thing I like about getting older is the honed problem solving skills. I try to deal with problems like I would my shopping and to-do list. A tick list I need to get done and fixed. It's easier that way.
Weeks of going to the hospital has still made me a bit of a Debbie downer though. And the trigger is: for the first time in a long time, I am seriously considering of quitting smoking. I have never been guilty of it, to be honest. Like Alanis in the 90s, I wear it as my fashion. A brand I see myself wearing - confidently, shamelessly. But since the "C" bomb, death, all of a sudden, seemed so real. And scary.
So, I'm really serious about quitting smoking. And two things I know about myself when I get serious: I get things done, and I get sad. One reason is because I tend to humanize stuff that I put in my mouth - food, body parts, and etc - and through the years, smoking has been a companion. Quitting smoking is like high school graduation - it's ending a phase in your life, and starting a new one. (A better one.) It's like silently saying bye to an old friend - 'coz it's just not the same anymore. Quitting is the right thing to do, but...but, it takes a while to actually get myself together and do it. I guess that's why addiction is bad. It trumps over human rationality. It's the state of our savage selves caught in fear. Overcoming addiction is then overcoming our darker selves.
Though my dad was no smoker and no drinker at all (the irony, eh?) - no bad and unhealthy habits whatsoever except, pork and women - I still took the news of his condition as my final blow: Just. Quit. Yet, I got stuck in the torment. The way the torment fills the void - the way habit comforts and soothes the unfamiliar, the changing, the living and the dying. When doctors discuss to you the statistics of how many people live after a stomach cancer surgery (10 is to 100), and the whole medical process and procedure that your family has to go through, and the expenses for all of that, and how they will tell you that in the end, only God knows when anyway, so just pray really hard - trust me. If you're a smoker, the first thing you wanna do is run out of that door, and smoke. You then process the reality - the immediacy, the meaning, or the lack of - of death while slowly, inhale...puff, and surely killing yourself. (The irony, eh?)
It's true what they say about habits: cultivate the good ones, so you can keep them. Habits save us from despair, from chaos and emptiness. Our habits can, literally, kill us after all. I'm glad I have a good habit of cleaning and organizing my house (and just anything) when I'm worried about something. As if I'm de-cluttering my mind, too. I think it's a good habit, and I like to keep it. Meanwhile, I think the other thing that makes me sad about quitting smoking is the fact that I'm killing myself every day - and I know it - yet why oh why, do I like it. (Yah, scary I know. I have a lot of daddy issues, I guess.)
I passed by Manila Bay when I was going home from the hospital the day we learned about my father's condition. It was a Tuesday. A rainy Tuesday, the 10th, same date as my father's birthday. Though it's been rainy, the sunset was perfect. I thought it was going to be cloudy and sunsetless, but I got a silverlining. (And I was very grateful. It was such a heavy day, and seeing something pretty and bright did help.) It was one one of the prettier sunsets I've seen in weeks, so it was something. It was the kind that, without any sense of direction, can be confused as either sunset or sunrise - as if, without sense of endings and beginnings only, now. I bathed in the warm bright light, and resigned at the thought that this too shall pass. (Both the sunset, and my woes.)
Overall, I'm still in a good place.
It's been a while since I was alone like this. Jazz in the background, soft lights, candles, wine, with me and - if just without these cigarettes - this would have been a better smelling ambiance.
Weeks of going to the hospital has still made me a bit of a Debbie downer though. And the trigger is: for the first time in a long time, I am seriously considering of quitting smoking. I have never been guilty of it, to be honest. Like Alanis in the 90s, I wear it as my fashion. A brand I see myself wearing - confidently, shamelessly. But since the "C" bomb, death, all of a sudden, seemed so real. And scary.
So, I'm really serious about quitting smoking. And two things I know about myself when I get serious: I get things done, and I get sad. One reason is because I tend to humanize stuff that I put in my mouth - food, body parts, and etc - and through the years, smoking has been a companion. Quitting smoking is like high school graduation - it's ending a phase in your life, and starting a new one. (A better one.) It's like silently saying bye to an old friend - 'coz it's just not the same anymore. Quitting is the right thing to do, but...but, it takes a while to actually get myself together and do it. I guess that's why addiction is bad. It trumps over human rationality. It's the state of our savage selves caught in fear. Overcoming addiction is then overcoming our darker selves.
Though my dad was no smoker and no drinker at all (the irony, eh?) - no bad and unhealthy habits whatsoever except, pork and women - I still took the news of his condition as my final blow: Just. Quit. Yet, I got stuck in the torment. The way the torment fills the void - the way habit comforts and soothes the unfamiliar, the changing, the living and the dying. When doctors discuss to you the statistics of how many people live after a stomach cancer surgery (10 is to 100), and the whole medical process and procedure that your family has to go through, and the expenses for all of that, and how they will tell you that in the end, only God knows when anyway, so just pray really hard - trust me. If you're a smoker, the first thing you wanna do is run out of that door, and smoke. You then process the reality - the immediacy, the meaning, or the lack of - of death while slowly, inhale...puff, and surely killing yourself. (The irony, eh?)
It's true what they say about habits: cultivate the good ones, so you can keep them. Habits save us from despair, from chaos and emptiness. Our habits can, literally, kill us after all. I'm glad I have a good habit of cleaning and organizing my house (and just anything) when I'm worried about something. As if I'm de-cluttering my mind, too. I think it's a good habit, and I like to keep it. Meanwhile, I think the other thing that makes me sad about quitting smoking is the fact that I'm killing myself every day - and I know it - yet why oh why, do I like it. (Yah, scary I know. I have a lot of daddy issues, I guess.)
I passed by Manila Bay when I was going home from the hospital the day we learned about my father's condition. It was a Tuesday. A rainy Tuesday, the 10th, same date as my father's birthday. Though it's been rainy, the sunset was perfect. I thought it was going to be cloudy and sunsetless, but I got a silverlining. (And I was very grateful. It was such a heavy day, and seeing something pretty and bright did help.) It was one one of the prettier sunsets I've seen in weeks, so it was something. It was the kind that, without any sense of direction, can be confused as either sunset or sunrise - as if, without sense of endings and beginnings only, now. I bathed in the warm bright light, and resigned at the thought that this too shall pass. (Both the sunset, and my woes.)
Overall, I'm still in a good place.
It's been a while since I was alone like this. Jazz in the background, soft lights, candles, wine, with me and - if just without these cigarettes - this would have been a better smelling ambiance.