Fag-bashing

Today I'm going to break two of my Cardinal Rules For Blogging:

Rule One: Never air dirty laundry.
Rule Two: Never piggyback off another blogger's post.

Truth be told, there's rarely any dirty laundry at all to air, around here. And yes, I would--probably--tell you if there was a giant smelly load...I just wouldn't necessarily detail every skidmark and bloodstain.

As for Rule Two, well, that just screams copout to me. It's one reason you won't find too many memes cluttering up this here Breadbin (another is that almost every segment of a meme really demands a blog entry in and of itself).
I especially hate to filch off people like Magazine Man , who is, tale for tale, the best pure storyteller I've run across in this big ol' blogosphere. But his post referenced above coincided, rather eerily, with something similar in my own life...a yellowish, smoky load of dirty laundry.

My beloved Eva started smoking again.

She's trying to quit, which is great, but for a couple of weeks there, I've been, um, smoking mad.

It's true, when I met her, Eva was a smoker: a true-blue, dyed-in-the wool puffer. One of the perqs (?) of her job running a market research company was a damn near unlimited supply of coffin nails. When I worked for that company, it seemed like every other day I was recruiting people for smoking studies. Like they needed more brands of cigarettes on the market.

If you detect a certain dislike for cigarettes, I must correct the misperception. I don't dislike them: I hate the fucking things. Like nothing else on this earth. The mere sight of one, dangling so insouciantly from between someone's fingers or lips, elevates my blood pressure and churns my stomach. It took more than I thought I had to overcome the fact that the woman I loved more than anyone, ever, was an inveterate practitioner of the hack arts.
I have been told, by Eva and by others, that I can't possibly understand the allure of smoking, because I'm not a smoker; for that matter, not an addict. That's all true. To this day, I can claim a slight addiction to coffee (a day without it will give me a whomping headache, but otherwise presents no problems), but nothing else has sunk claws into me.

I also have a large defect in my character that can prevent me from accepting what somebody is telling me, if it contradicts my own assertion. So when somebody tries to explain the wonderful life-affirming feeling they get from sucking on a cancer stick, I just can't help but think of a lovely coughing wheezing shortness of breath. Stress triggers smoking? Sure it does, which is why so many smokers absolutely must light up immediately after sex, after a meal, or when they're out with their friends at the awful hellish bar they entered with a smile on their faces.

One thing I have accepted is that it's much harder for some people to quit than it is for others. I won't accept the common propaganda that nicotene is harder to quit than heroin; too many people have just up and decided to quit and never smoked again for that. But for those who are truly addicted, and evidently my wife is one, willpower alone isn't enough. It's devilishly hard.

So hard that after four flawless smoke-free years, for no reason Eva could really articulate (beyond, I suspect, a strong 'I gotta' urge), she found herself smoking again.

She told me rather sheepishly, prefacing it with 'what's the worst thing you can think of' and at first refusing to spill it. Here's Ken, dreaming up all kinds of horrid things. You lost your job. (Fat chance of that; the company would implode, and I think they all know it.) We have to sell the house. (So what? I've moved something like thirty times before...no big deal.) You're gonna die...(Naw, she'd be crying.) I'd overstated the case dramatically: my wife was simply ashamed, and the reality was a relief.

Well, not really a relief. I won't lie and say it was. It's sort of like winning a huge argument four years ago only to find the damn thing's been laying dormant and has suddenly erupted right in your face. Still, I steeled myself. Christ, Ken, you helped her beat this thing once. You can do it again. Mixed in with that, a sense of guilt left over from my twenties, when I had to save the world singlehandedly and blamed myself when I couldn't. Mixed in with that, a rancid memory of leaving my first real girlfriend (fiancee, actually) for a whole host of reasons, but mostly because she'd taken up smoking and progressed to two-plus packs a day. The air in her apartment was yellow. Rather than so much as see if she was interested in quitting, I bolted. Nice guy, me. I swore I would never do that again.

Stilll...

When Eva successfully kicked the habit four years ago, she told me her prime motivation had nothing to do with money and little to do with her own health in and of itself. It was, she said, that she wanted to spend as much time with me as possible: she didn't want anything to steal her away from me prematurely.
Awww, mush. Still, I emphatically echoed the sentiment. I didn't (and don't) want to lose her, either.

So here she is, smoking. A war started up inside me as soon as the ramifications sunk into my head. Some very vile thoughts slugged it out against what I like to think of as my forgiving and charitable nature.

In the end, I decided that even a shortened time with my wife was preferable to any alternative. Eva decided to try to quit again, a decision I am profoundly grateful for.

The battle begins anew...