When you take to smoking, you begin to notice the quiet moments, the lulls in your day, and punctuate them with a cigarette. Got an hour to kill before class starts? Have a cigarette! Feel like reading a book outside? Have a cigarette! It’s as if you’re on a schedule, but a situational one rather than a time-based one.

I live with a smoker. In comparison to my two-a-weekday pattern, where they’re spaced out by ten to twelve hours, he is a super-smoker, up to a pack a day when he’s really stressed. There was a time not too long ago when I used to give him hell for going over four in a day. He doesn’t smoke in the house, but there’s no way we can hide his habit from Lor — that many cigarettes in that short of a time will linger on you, even if you’re outside and pacing.

I can’t say that this is my first dalliance with nicotine. On my eighteenth birthday, I went to the Marvin Road Safeway and bought five dollars’ worth of scratch tickets and a pack of Marlboro Menthol Lights, neither working out for me very well. I tried starting up again when Lor was young — I was working a thankless job and stressed and needed an escape — but I couldn’t keep the ashes from blowing into my car and ended up passing them off on a friend.

Yesterday, I bought the wrong pack once again, and since I don’t particularly care for them (not menthol lights/Fantasias, weird taste — although they smell fantastic before they’re lit, bad association) I passed them off to Nick and decided that I wasn’t going to replace them. Do I enjoy smoking? Every now and then. Am I addicted yet? I don’t think so. Does it make sense to buy another pack? No, especially considering our budget.

This will be interesting, though, seeing that I started back up due to stress and boy, today is one stressful day. I’m curious to see whether or not I’ll show signs of withdrawal. So far, it’s been almost a day, and I’m reluctant to label my headache a symptom, mainly because I’m having the WORST DAY EVER, so yeah. We’ll see.

(I’m grossly paraphrasing the conversation, but mind you, it was had in the wee hours and my capacity for remembering minutely has a steep drop after approximately 10:49pm on weekdays.)

“So how many cardigans should I pack?”
“One, so knowing you, four.”

I stopped by the house on Monday morning before Nick dropped me off at the college. The front door was ajar, and I slipped in unnoticed. The air was still, but filled with nervous energy.

“I just came to see him before you left,” I told no one in particular as I walked quietly toward his room.

My dad’s voice echoed from their bedroom. “Don’t say goodbye or anything – we don’t want him to stress out.”

“I know, I won’t,” I said as I peeked into his room. “Anyway, he’s asleep.”

I went back towards their room and stood in the doorway, watching as they tucked things into their suitcase as they filled me in on their trip plans. Watching them both pack was like watching a movie, for they’d never taken a trip together… well, since I’d been born. Once Joseph was born, that option was taken off the table for good.

The last trip the four of us took together was when I was twelve – for a couple of years, we all would head out to Camp Prime Time for a weekend. I remember my parents fussing over what I packed, double- and triple-checking to make sure I had everything I needed. I was in the sixth grade and knew what to expect – campfire songs, therapeutic horse trails, getting to know the other families from Parent to Parent – all the things a preteen xenophobe could not admit to loving. It wouldn’t have been a lie to say that I disliked that, either, but there was a part of me that needed it, that longed to see if there were other kids like me, to try to look into their eyes and see if they were broken too.

My dad handed me the spare car keys and we went over our schedules for the week. They were going to be gone until at least Wednesday, and then would head back on Friday and stay up there until they brought him home on Monday. I looked at the large blue suitcase, filled to the brim with shirts, jeans, socks. I worried about how he would react when he realized that he was staying and my parents were leaving, if he would eat, if he would stay dressed or punch a wall or take his medication. My mother didn’t look at or speak to me, keeping herself busy with the papers in front of her. A part of me felt like I was abandoning them, but at the same time felt abandoned.

As I started packing up their computer, I heard my mother whisper, “Why are you bothering her with this?”

“She’d want to know,” he replied softly. My father, while a quiet man, has an authoritative tone even when joking around. His volume, well, spoke volumes.

I grabbed all the things they needed and looked around. I could see that they didn’t need me there anymore. “I guess I’ll get going now,” I said, more to the doorjamb than anything else.

“We’ll see you later, then,” my father called back, packing up his work laptop.

I looked toward Joseph’s room, his loud snore bouncing off the walls of the great room. I tried to commit it to memory, to temper the abnormal silence that would undoubtedly weigh down my heart in the days to come.