he looks like he works with his hands
- Riley Howe
- Sep 7, 2024
- 5 min read
Shockingly MY picture and not robbed from Pinterest. Take that, plagiarism laws. Off of a random bench in Somewhere, Vermont?
Another messy, rambling, casual post. I'm pleasantly surprised how much I've been writing lately; normally my thoughts never feel cohesive enough to put down in words. Yay for the countless hours drilling mindfulness into me? Yay for Zoloft? Yay for the creative momentum of writing every day; on sex therapy, on canine psychology, on Oedipus Rex, on sci-fi movies, on guilt, on grief, on graveyards?
Who knows. But I guess writing (creation, in general) is the closest you can get to bloodletting and purgatives while still being considered socially sane.
Which is a great (and unplanned) transition into what I wanted to write about.
TW for some brief mentions of, y'know, the normal stuff for when I talk seriously and not about movies and frat party themes. SH and ED and all that. Live laugh love.
I.
I've been smoking more, which I know is bad.
But, as a quick aside-- I know many people who care about my health are reading this, and to them I say: I know I worry you all sick sometimes because (to use a defeatist and "bad" phrase) I am a chronic fuck up, but I pinky-promise I am trying very hard to be careful. Please don't think I'm a chronic fuck up. I'm sorry that I always forget to text back. I don't want you to worry.
(Fact: I know that I am technically not a chronic fuck up. Fact: I have a genetic predisposition towards addictive behaviors. Fact: maladaptive behaviors are a symptom, not a cause. Everything has a function. If you can find the function, you can fill it. You can fill it however you want. Fact: crickets. My inner self is a well, and when you drop a coin in you never hear it hit the bottom).
II.
So---- sometimes when it is very late and I cannot sleep, I grab my crumpled-up pack of Marlboro Reds.
III.
Tangent, again: I impulsively bought a new pack today, for a totally unreasonable price in my opinion, and I know it was impulsive because I had barely eaten and caught myself daydreaming about passing out in the darkroom and bleeding on the floor which in DBT terms we call eeeeeeekkk red flag inching closer and closer to crisis zone. So-- that wasn't ideal, and to be honest I'm mostly just mad about the cost. I am NOT making enough money to support this kind of ridiculous behavior!!!! In THIS economy??!!
IV.
Anyways, I grab my crumpled-up pack of Marlboro Reds and I walk across the street to the river. I sit on my favorite rock by the river and I smoke and I think about this book I read last spring, Healing Night by Rubin Naiman, which I'm citing because I am an English major and it has been drilled into me so deeply to cite everything for fear of death and academic dishonesty that it would keep me up at night if I didn't.
Naiman proposes that the body has ways of asserting its needs even when we refuse to listen to it; that maybe depressive episodes occur when we chronically deprive our body of rest and it decides ENOUGH IS ENOUGH; that maybe when we can't get out of bed it's because our body is begging for reprieve (and yet we still don't listen).
He says, roughly, that in our society sickness is the closest we get to meditation.
When I sit on my rock and smoke, I startle at how right he is: how if you took away the cigarette I would pretty much be box breathing, that IN-hold-OUT-hold over and over and over, how my focus narrows to the breath and the smoke and the river and the breath and the smoke and the river. I wonder how many other people feel this way too, taking smoke breaks at work and after dinner. It never ceases to surprise me how OBVIOUS it is that maladaptive coping mechanisms are just our body's way of grasping at things it craves but is lacking.
We are living through an epidemic of people not being able to take what they need.
V.
Sometimes I feel like (ironically) the only deep breath I ever get is after I've smoked.
We drink to fall asleep, drink to have an excuse to be around people, drink to move freely without feeling so aware of our graceless and inconvenient bodies, drink to (let me try and steer this clumsy prose back towards some equally clumsy thesis comparing specific behaviors to specific therapeutic techniques) practice interpersonal effectiveness. Or something.
When we are drunk, we are- socially- the people we want to be in our daily lives. To an extent, of course. There are many exceptions.
But we know what we want, and we have just enough verve to go after it (liquid courage). We are engaged but self-assured; playful but startlingly serious; uncomfortable yet invincible.
VI.
When I sit on my rock I try to ask myself: do I really want to smoke right now? Or do I just want an excuse to stare out at the river and take a couple deep breaths and ignore the world for a second?
I usually smoke anyway, even if I know technically speaking it's more about the quiet ritual of it than the nicotine. But I mostly just count it as a win if I'm not putting the cigarettes out on my own body, so.
Anyways. It's bad to smoke. It also, at the moment, has betrayed me, because I didn't prioritize following my meal plan enough today and so my stomach is painfully empty but I have a limited food supply and cigarettes suppress your appetite so I thought it would help but I actually feel worse now and I might have to cave and go make, like, pasta, but I sort of would rather die because that sounds like it might be the final straw and my stomach will actually just shrivel and prolapse out of my body or something to try and end its misery.
VII.
Speaking of putting things out of their misery. What the fuck is this? What am I even writing?
I swear when I was out smoking at the bus stop- it's raining here- I had a good dialogue. This was going to be short and snappy and cohesive and a teeny bit poignant and culturally relevant. FML.
The point: maybe I need to box breathe more. Maybe we should replace cigarettes with just, like, those breath training tools athletes use so people can go sit at a bus stop after their lunch break and practice breathing in and out a lot until they feel better. Maybe life would be better if everyone just acted a little bit drunk all the time.
Maybe I just need to buckle down and follow my meal plan. Do I just get existential when I'm nutrition-deprived?
oh my dearest readers, i wonder so much when i write things like this-- not funny, not casual, not anonymous-- what you are thinking. it is bizarre to bare your soul on the internet, which i suppose is what i am doing, although i know hardly anyone reads this (which i am both grateful and not grateful for).
is it well-received? does it mean anything to you? does it stay with you when you close the tab?
dissatisfiedly and despairingly signing off for tonight so i can go wash the smoke off. xoxxoxoxxo lee
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