I've had a long-standing addiction to music and that goes without saying. Still I said it. Redundancy. But other addictions, unhealthy addictions, are new to me. For example, I started smoking kind of as a regular part of my drunken routine recently. It would be better if I could unpair drinking from smoking so that I could ONLY smoke but that's not as easy as it seems it could be. I'm not sure which is a less expensive habit. Or addictive. I could probably just drink for free on the weekends at parties and not smoke but I think that's something only for the socially able. Like, I'm awkward, so I drink before parties so that I hate them less and I smoke at parties because you automatically make friends at parties when you're part of the smoking crowd. And you make friends with the cool people. That, and the white trash.
I think that addiction is something I might want to conquer in my novel for NaNoWriMo. Just a characters personal struggle with it... obviously because I'm having a personal struggle with it. I could write really honestly about the mental hardships of moving away for college, and of course also about the awesome things about it. In some ways it's similar to high school because the bad parts are bad and stressful and hard but the good parts are so good. And in a lot of ways it's better than high school but I think it's the same. I feel better, as a whole, because I'm out there trying. I'm at least doing something. But it feels the same because that's my disposition. That's how I feel, as a person, always.
So I just keep telling myself "It's not a problem until you're thirty."
And it's kind of true, mostly not though. I mean... it's a problem no matter what. It's always detrimental to my health. But if it's what is making me feel free and alive then that's what I am supposed to be doing. I honestly and truly believe that experiencing human consciousness as fully as possible is the way life is supposed to be lived, so that's the goal. And I'm going to be smoking and drinking and traveling and studying and loving and living until I find that I need to experience human consciousness in a different way.
I like the idea that life is lived in phases. I like the idea that my grandma got the chance to read a lot of books before she died. It's sad that she lived alone, although she wanted to, but I'm glad that she got time to know herself before she left herself. Maybe that's sad. I don't think I want that, but I don't think I'll ever want a new phase of my life. I think it will happen, and only then will I realize it's wonderful. My whole life is wonderful.
I can't tell if this in insightful or just drunk because I'm on my 3rd large cup of wine. In some ways I can't wait until I'm thirty to have glasses of wine, instead of large cups of wine, but then I will also have the problems I'm making now. I mean, I don't think I'm ever going to be an alcoholic (but then again I don't think anyone ever sees themselves growing up and becoming an alcoholic). Still, it would never be me. I'm too introverted and existentialist for that shit. But I could see myself becoming a writer holed up in an apartment in a big city in Europe smoking a lot. And lung cancer would be terrible, obviously, and it's ironic that I smoke at all because I hate when I get so sick that I can barely breathe and I KNOW how that feels. And my dad smokes, which I always hated. I still do, because he's way past thirty, but I understand it now. Or rather, I've always understood it but now I understand it even better.
So addiction is complicated, but that's how everything is. Complicated. Life is complicated. Life is a game of chance; so is smoking.
Other thought: smoking is both the most personal and most social thing I know. Everyone who smokes bonds over it but it means something else to each individual who is smoking. Each person has their own thoughts about the dirty cigarette, and the beautiful smoke itself. I don't think there's anyone out there who is able to smoke and just believe that it's safe, or anyone I know anyways. Everyone can think of someone who hates them for their nasty habit. And everyone who can think of someone who knows that their nasty habit doesn't matter at all; but somehow this person's opinion matters less. I'll never know why I view the negative opinion with so much more strength than I view the neutral or positive or agreeable one.
God I can't wait to snowboard this Winter. I haven't felt like that in forever.
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