Today when I went into a convenience store there was a sign that said something to the effect; “smoking kills more people than murder suicide and so on….. every day”
It just bugs me, non smokers don’t have a clue in this world how smokers brains work. Like we don’t know we’re shaving years off our lives, as though it isn’t intentional.
I go back to the Kurt Vonnegut quote;
“The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”
I was loading up the truck yesterday, got short of breath and that little voice in the back of my head; “It’s working.”
So when you tell me, a smoker, that I’m going to die younger because I smoke, you’re validating me. You’ve noticed the reason I engage in the behavior I do. It takes an edge off the pain at the same time shortens the amount of time I have to endure it.
I don’t think they’re ever going to get it. Non smokers are entirely a mystery to me. How do their brains work? Do they want to live forever? Are they fully stuck in death denial? Poor unfortunate souls every last one of them I guess. I used to be one, when I was much younger and less bitter and used up.
I remember the exact thought that turned the key; “not much to be said for clean living anymore.” It was after my ex wife left, the economy hit the skids, and I wanted to die, but of course no one would let me go that easy.
Yet no one at all would stop me from taking a puff. No one cared, and it was a relief.