Читать книгу Rise Speak Change - Girls Write Now - Страница 35
ОглавлениеRecently in health class, I surprised my classmates by arguing against smoking. Just last year, I’d had smoked out of insecurity, but I became disillusioned with it. I learned from the experience that it was toxic in more ways than one.
“Mom, when did you start smoking?”
“Probably at fourteen, but you must understand—it was a very different time.”
At ten, I understood. She told me enough stories from the ’70s that I developed a mental film, colored by her nostalgia, played to psychedelic rock. The pride I had in my adopted mom’s rebellious spirit was lost on others. I remembering thinking I’d never be so prim as the friend who coughed and swatted her trail of smoke. Yet in the car the smoke wouldn’t leave, so I’d prolong my childhood habit of covering my lower face with my sleeve to keep from being nauseated. My father was unaffected. Though smoking had helped his voice acting career, he’d quit long ago. He once told me in his deep timbre, “They changed it. Smells awful now.”
Mom’s side had the addiction gene. Aunt J smoked until the MS and morphine killed her. Aunt G would bum a cig from Mom but quickly resorted to nicotine gum, and Grandma had to be hypnotized four times to stop. I suggested G’s and Grandma’s ways to my mom, but she told me it wouldn’t work for her, and “Grandma and my father had surpassed the life expectancy for lifestyles like theirs.” One night years ago, I cried to Aunt L, “She stays healthy, she’s going to live a long time.” L consoled, but I dreamt of losing a mother again.
In eighth grade, my friend and I would talk about life after our parents or entertain plans of running away—she from her siblings and I from the guilt of the growing rift with my mom. After taking care of Grandma, she had little patience during nights I stayed up perfecting delayed assignments. Between lost sleep and lost interest in school, I lost my lunch privileges. Banished to the cafeteria for a week by the new warden on offense of escape, I secluded myself to the science room for months. But for all my fasts and isolation, nirvana didn’t come. Somewhere in the gloom, I was struck. In a kitchen drawer between the sea of batteries and rubber bands was the bright red Marlboro pack. Loud as an ambulance. The ripped plastic cover would be furtive as fingerprints in dust.
I emerged from the Brooklyn Bridge station. Anxiety was asphyxiating me. I hastily pulled one from the Ziploc in my backpack, then hid behind a closed kiosk, feebly striking, then crushing matchsticks. The wind challenged me but with cupped hand, I carried the flame to the dry bent cigarette. I drew in, held it until it punched my throat. I was a pathetic hacking sideshow for passersby. The real college smokers chattered feet away.
Fortunately, my parents didn’t notice the new girl that walked into the apartment that afternoon. Henceforth, after smoking, I drank Tropicana to mask the stench, which left a sweetly sick ashen aftertaste.
Tired of being my own voyeur, I told the person I foolishly wanted to impress the most. So hooked on the high from smoking with him those afternoons on park benches, it became harder to ignore middle school’s deafening crescendo.
If I dove off the deep end that May like my mom said, I spent a summer alone at the bottom of a pool. The virago I’d created for his gaze drowned; I had to introduce a more anemic self to my friend. I confessed smoking. Turns out she experimented too. But we punks were far less adventurous than the new students. One delinquent showed off his new zip lighter by lighting AXE body spray in the back of history class. I got cred from him for my twenty-dollar St. Marks cartilage piercing, but it wasn’t enough—I was just another nerd in awe. I would supply. To advertise, I lit up outside during lunch, and in a day, I got my first customer. My then-stunned coterie later became my only clientele, but that too faded out. It was at night my friend and I sauntered the streets and picked up still-burning cigarettes. Passed between us, always beginning, never finishing, the thoughts floating in our emptying heads that longed to escape like the billowing smoke that danced into the ether.
One December’s night she said, “I think it was just a phase.”
“Yeah, I feel like it was for purely aesthetic reasons. See, I’m not addicted, I’m a social smoker. I have to coerce myself into doing this.” I looked down at the glowing orange light.
Maybe it’s ’cause of my mom posing a mental block, but I couldn’t commit for the rest of my life. In this age, we all know the health risks . . . and that these aren’t cheap! The kids choosing that huge expenditure kill the frugal indie boho image they’re going for. It pains me to abide by those ad campaigns but to defy them with no great benefit to myself. I’m not counterculture; I’m another twenty-first-century teen parading my overly glamorized self-destruction.
“Are you even inhaling right?”
For my fifteenth birthday I got a Peace Lily to clear the air with my mom. When I came clean to her, she said, “You should have charged them more.”
Revolution
ALLISON MOORER
I am weary of reducing people, of seeing them as only their political beliefs. That only makes more problems and divisiveness. People are never one thing—we are all complicated beings, and at the end of the day, pretty good ones. I want to believe that, and I want to live as if that is true. Today, that is how I rise, speak, and change.
When we rise let it not be violently.
To rise is to grow. Let us grow more open hearts.
To rise is to increase. Let us increase our compassion.
To rise is to emerge. Let us emerge from our fogs with greater awareness.
To rise is to rebel. Let us rebel by linking arms and singing.
When we rise, let it be with love.
When we speak let it not be unkindly.
To speak is to say. Let us say our highest intentions.
To speak is to be fluent. Let us be fluent first in listening.
To speak is to address. Let us address an even playing field.
To speak is to declare. Let us declare what we are certain is true.
When we speak, let it be with love.
When we change let it not be through force.
To change is to alter. Let us alter our biased ideas.
To change is to modify. Let us modify what no longer works.
To change is to adjust. Let us adjust to obstacles as water does to rocks.
To change is to correct. Let us correct that which has been overturned.
When we change, let it be with love.
