Smokescreens

What is it about smoking that rubs at people? A friend once told me that smoking suits a particular person. Sometimes, you look at a girl and she's all dark hair and alabaster skin, alluring and intriguing. You see her standing alone, minding her own business, cigarette in hand as she slowly blows smoke off her slightly parted lips and it enhances the drama of the moment. You're hooked. You think femme fatale. You think Greta Garbo. A flight of scenarios enter your head and you're immediately transported to a different place, different time.

She's sitting alone in a coffee shop, wait -- no, a pub -- cigarette in between two nimble fingers, nails lacquered red, staring blindly out of the window with her face resting on her palm, brooding, thinking, giving off a sigh of such affectation that pulls you to her, but wait, that would ruin the image, wouldn't it? "Who is this woman? What are her thoughts? What does she do? How does she feel? What happened to her?"

You shake your head and the image disappears. The illusion stands. She's appealing. And then you spot a girl, trashy in the entire I'm-not-really-trashy-but-I-like-how-it-looks sort of way. She's taking a drag off a stick hanging in between her red-smeared lips, a dazed expression in her eyes, her clothes branded but ratty looking in manner of street style. Urban chic.

You imagine her partying it up at 3 am in some ratty apartment, chugging a bottle of tequila as she lies down in a tub, abusing different substances with people just as messed up as she is. Youth and excess in all its glory. Just another person defeated by life.

You shy away from the thought. It's sad and scary and she seems like a train-wreck waiting to happen. It's not as sexy as the previous vision. You shudder. Spotting a sweet demeanored, girl next door type smoking is, on the other hand, perplexing. Something is off and the cigarette looks lost in her hand. It's boggling in the fact that your brain can't quite process it.

She's got a good life, doesn't she? Carefree laugh lines etched in the corners of her eyes and mouth, the cigarette looks out of place. She's got a healthy relationship with her family, her boyfriend adores her, she's a good seed -- why is she smoking?

There's a taboo carried by smoking that isn't as obvious in a vice like drinking. Smokers give off a "I'm not satisfied with life" vibe that screams "DANGER!". Why is that? I personally don't get it. Maybe because I'm a smoker myself, but shouldn't the opposite hold true? Shouldn't I be in on why smokers should be justified? I'm happy. I'm perfectly content. I'm a smoker. So... what?

Truth is, smoking is not so different from drinking. When I forced myself to pick between the two, I gave up insobriety and picked smoking. To me, it was no choice at all. I never saw the appeal of getting pissed drunk and lowering your inhibitions. When the drinks pour in, the rest of your sound judgment comes off. You make decisions you normally wouldn't make. You do things you'd never have thought to do. You're in a vulnerable state.

The double standard is that you can find a girl, any sort of girl, drinking and it would be a perfectly normal, understandable thing. She's just unwinding. You see a smoker, you think there's something wrong. There isn't. Smokers, we're all one and the same. We smoke because we want to. That doesn't make us bad or naughty or dissatisfied, it just makes us smokers. Try to wrap your tiny little brain on that concept.

And if, by the time you finish reading this, you still preach to me about the "error of my ways", I blow smoke to your face.

I'm a good girl. I don't drink. I don't have a boyfriend. I don't do drugs. I read. I watch films. I don't party it up and meet sketchy strangers in bars and clubs, looking to get laid or to tease. I don't sleaze up my outfits. I do my job and I do it well. I don't have any complains about life or love or other such factors that are a problem to me and only me. I don't have drama in my life. I don't curse or cuss or use profanities. I have no one to hate on. Can you say the same?

Love,
Essa.