In anticipation of breathing freely
13 December 2011 06:00 AM Categories: Writing prompts | The kid
The boy loves Christmas. He loves the tree. He is interested in the story, too, the original one, about the son of the God we don’t really believe in. In fact, he recently said he likes Christmas better than Halloween because of the religious story behind it. We’ve got lights strung all over the house, bits of celebratory brightness, and he would eat every meal on the rug in front of the tree, pausing occasionally to climb up on a stepstool to get a closer look at the ornaments up top, if we’d let him. The topic of presents hasn’t come up much with him, though of course I know he’ll enjoy that, too, the only grandchild, the prince, the once and future king, feted at every opportunity.
My therapist warned me against smoking as a stress-buster. I promised my husband last spring (when I bought the pack during a time of huge emotional stress) that I wouldn’t smoke any more. I wasn’t lying, exactly, I just didn’t anticipate the need, the urge, months after the fact. I don’t think this is a permanent habit. It’s a telling one, however, a return to a misshapen coping mechanism, like punk music played at earsplitting levels and other adolescent forms of rebellion.
Talk of where our next Christmas tree would go started last January. This was an important topic, a vital one, and we had a family confab before buying this year’s tree, an attempt to avoid last December’s little boy meltdown when we put the tree in a different spot than years previous. But he’s a different boy now, a bit more flexible, a bit more agreeable. The tree is in a new spot, sparkling in the corner by the fireplace.
Maybe my urge to smoke is telling me I have to go back in time to confront certain things. I have to relive the past (in new ways; what a clever subconscious I have) in order to climb up on its remains and shake my fist at it before pumping that fist in the air, victorious, breathing freely, my fingers garlic- and mint-scented, the stink of tobacco and its byproducts long washed away. My grandmother smoked. My grandfather smoked. My friends used to smoke. The point is to figure out what the act of smoking means to me, outside of self-destruction. I do it alone. I hide the evidence. On the days when I am less hazy or stuck, I can barely draw in one poisonous breath, and sometimes, after I have unloaded whatever it is that is bothering me, I take out the pack, reach for a cigarette, and change my mind. So maybe it’s about the suppression of something important.
The tree is in front of me, the lights still on. The boy, my responsibility, my cuddly creature, the one I love unconditionally, is at school. I hear the washing machine, the grumble of a car going down our street, the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard. Asher the gray loaf of a cat is snoring lightly beside me and the dog is curled up in her bed. I have not yet washed my hands, so I still smell the past on me, the scent of smoking courts and high school and winter nights without gloves. It’s my roommate letting the smoke trail out of her window. It’s the way I used to smell after hitting the bars back when people could smoke in bars. It’s the smell of my sickness, of my inaction, the temporary stay.
In ten days, our family will start arriving for the holiday. Somehow I will have gifts, small tokens. I will prepare the cioppino, refill the drinks, smile and be polite when I need to be. We’re providing the kid with a Christmas story, with memories of family, with the illusory feeling of permanence that is so necessary in childhood.
And I won’t light a single cigarette. I won’t be able to. I won’t be alone. My mind, however, will be turning, turning, turning on itself, trying to figure out answers to questions it doesn't fully understand.
Wrote this yesterday for last night's writing group, from the prompt "Holidays." I was exhausted and emotionally spent, but so glad I went. Thank you, ladies. And thank you to rcb, for being there and for gently pushing me to actually talk instead of volleying messages back and forth or IMing.
My therapist has broken her leg. She's ok, but will be out of commission for a while. Unfortunately, this happened in the midst of opening something extremely painful (and related to abandonment). I feel like I pried open a box that I shouldn't have and now I have to deal with what popped out of it. Hence yesterday's emotional exhaustion.
From a prompt for my writing group: "Holidays."
Image by strollerdos.
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