It was one of those summer days that went on forever. The kind when youre a kid and you didnt do anything yesterday and today isn't proving to be better. I was still young enough, 13, to wake up in time for the Price is Right, but old enough to know that waking up did me no good. And everything was gray. It was too bright to draw the blinds so the house had a murky, gray overcast that loomed just above my head and seemed to follow me everywhere. The blinds were gray, the furniture was and even the walls seemed gray. I remember it being so hot, too hot to even go outside. But then again all summers seem too hot.
The season of pools and camps and hot dogs was drifting by, I could feel the minutes pass. I was too bored to swim, too bored to move and these were the days before the internet provided hours of entertainment. So I sat. And Laid. And thought. My body was just beginning to change from the influx of hormones and my mind couldn't have been any more places. This was the summer when everything changed. The summer that would make me see everything different. This was the time when I started to become aware of what had really happened and what was happening.
I laid there, on that gray sofa watching fuzzy HBO that came in from the neighbors cable, wanting anything to happen. Staying still and silent, trying to make something, anything at all change. Getting up, lifting my just barely-a-woman's-body with my knuckles, like an old woman, I realized something. I could make something happen.
The rebellion had just begun to boil in my blood, you could tell it was coming. I was starting small, eating ice cream for breakfast and painting my nails black only to have my mother make me take it off 20 minutes later. But it was there and how different I would be just a year from then. And suddenly I became enraged. At everything. I was mad at my dad for leaving me like this and sleeping through my childhood. Mad at my friends and cousins for always having these seemingly perfect summers that you dream of. Mad at my mother for pinching my thighs and for reasons I could not understand yet, but would all too soon. Mad at God and the world for giving met his life, for leaving me to myself with all of this flying around my head.
It was hot, taking of my pajama pants so that I only had on a tank top and my still little girl underwear. I told you, rebellion. I walked to the kitchen, the kitchen that had been scrubbed so many times by my hands and even once in a rage, had its drawers rearranged. Looking into the fridge, there were only American cheese slices, hot dogs and yellow Gatorade. Uninterested, I walked into my room, which was also my fathers. Sifting through the newspapers and cigarette packs, I was disgusted. I wanted my own room. And I could feel it boiling inside, somewhere deep where the light of day never shines, anger or was it resentment? Something my not fully developed frontal lobe could process.
I felt dizzy with it, intoxicated by the emotion that tears fell down my face and onto my bear legs. Something had to break or be ruined, it was decided. I looked all around the room and saw it, a half pack of Marlboro reds, which meant my dad wasn't having a good week. Which is so ironic now, because that is my bad day or drunk night smoke. I thought of all the things I could do and settled on flushing them down the toilet. That will show him, I thought. Racing to the bathroom, with a look of wonder and power, I opened the pack over the toilet. But then I thought, what if I didn't ruin them?
What if I kept them?
I went into my grandmothers room and laid on her bed, it was always so much nicer than my top bunk and cooler. I thought of all the times I yelled at my dad or Nanie for smoking. Or the time I caught my mother with her friends, when I ran out into the night and refused to come in. Of all the times my dad would drop me off and my mom would make me undress in the entry way because I smelled like the smoker. I thought, fuck all of you, and I grabbed the pack and the industrial sized box of matches.
Pacing back in forth with a cigarette between my middle and pointer finger, deciding what to do. I was growing the balls to do it, to actually light it, but where? Not in the house, it did smell of stale smoke but my dad would smell the fresh tobacco. And then I ran to the garage. My frantic nature coming out, my neurosis just beginning to form inside my personality, I opened the door just a little. But then too worried about some baby boomer smelling it and telling my dad, I shut it.
I sat down down some crates, next to old bookshelves being used as storage. It was stifling, breathing in and out, my lungs were getting hot and sweat was dripping everywhere. Looking down at my body, I wondered if breasts would ever grow, if my looks would rival those of women on TV, or even of my own mothers. I was just growing into my self, my braces had come off, the baby fat was gone and I had finally realized that brightly, patterned pants were not a good look. But my young mind didn't quite understand why people mistook me for my father's girlfriend or why he always told me to cover up. You cover up, I always thought.
I examined my legs, at the time they couldn't have been more than 3 feet long but they were strong and scarred. I counted them, 4 and my freckles, 26 before looking down at that cigarette again. Taking a deep breath of hot garage, I lit the match.
Thinking of all the movies and my mother's friends, I put the cigarette to my lips and breathed in. I can remember this even now, the sudden clarity that washed over my brain as I brought the flame to my future habit.

Breathing deeper and deeper and deeper until I couldn't.

A vicious cough escaped from my body, rattling my brain and bringing tears to my eyes. I flicked the ash, still burning, onto my leg, causing a scar that didn't mean anything. Trying again to inhale and exhale the smoke, it just came out of my nose. I put it out in a dark corner of the garage, went inside and threw up.



Now 7 years later, hundreds of thousands of dollars given to big tobacco, I do and don't regret that fateful day that probably wouldn't have happened had I been in camp or had a sibling. That cig set in motion the events that would lead me here, to this very second. I never would have had the times, highs and lows or met most of the people that have graced my life. Those little tubes of nicotine have provided me comfort in times of need, gotten me through high school and finals and cold, lonely winter months. Then again, I could have done without the that scar.