dumb pains of the young adult

I miss smoking.

I miss cigarettes like one misses a good, old friend. It is terrible, I know, and nasty, but I miss its companionship in the silence of the night, in the long, wandering walks downtown when I skipped tons of boring classes to visit – explore – the beautifully neglected places around the university. I miss alleviating my brain, up in puffs, and clouding anguished thoughts that only young adults feel, my own silly dramas. I miss it in my lungs, the rush of chemicals, blood pressure dropping, falling down and down, as well as holding it between my fingers (for I thought it to be ever-so-charming, like old, black and white James Dean).

Like a pervert, I miss it in my mouth too.

More than the physical thing, I miss the sense of youth it used to awaken in me. I feel like my young days have gone away with that last pack, that last breath of air exhaled. I feel a bit detached from reality, too, but that must be only the cold turkey talking. And as I put away my Zippo lighter, carefully tucked in the last drawer, I feel like putting away, too, that very sense of danger, that rush from the nights when I allowed myself to be juvenile, immature, delinquent, and relished in the sound of all those terrible, terrible conversations.

I feel like discarding a huge chunk of the past, in fact: the memories, the remembrance of good years and times and places and people. Everything I used to love met its departing hour and, together with tobacco, I let it go. It is foolish, I know, for everything and everyone grows up and changes, but I feel saddened because all things tied up to the smell of smoke, the stench of sweat, old couches and booze breath are now, like that last cig fag, gone in the wind.

I feel terribly silly with the melancholy (“it will be good for everyone, it will be better”, I repeat, like a mantra) but, at the same time, I feel like such a different person; so serious when free from the white deadly sticks, from its stench. I’ve always hated being serious, but I guess that’s it. Time to bid goodbye and quit.

I miss it, but it is all for the best.