A Whole New You

Welcome to the world! it's a whole new you. This you doesn't have the same vices the old you had. This you doesn't smoke. this you doesn't drink. This you doesn't have a phone because old you broke it last night. Most importantly, this you has spiders in his brain. Why are we doing this again? To prove a point? A point to who? Me? Grammy? Those people at the church you want to talk to? What happened to the beauty of a life deprived? What happened to wanting the void?

I guess it really makes writing interesting because the spiders in my brain make my head feel like it's about to explode. They just want nicotine. they want it so badly and I just want to shut them up. I have a million excuses. "oh no one cares if I actually do it", "Lent doesn't actually start till Wednesday", "I could do it if I wasn't so frustrated". Each one of them could let me slip out of this deal and crawl back into the warm embrace of my vape pen. Instead, for the past 20 minutes I've been awake, I've been sucking down jolly ranchers in the hopes that they'll be good enough to kill the spiders. The spiders don't die though. You just get better at ignoring them. The last time I did this, I would have dreams about smoking, only to wake up hating myself for being such a quitter. "Do you have the drugs or do the drugs have you?" my Grammy would say. Believe me, they have me today. It's only been a half hour since I've woken up and I'm eyeing my vape pen. Hey, at least that's half an hour longer than I normally go without it in the morning. Besides, nobody cares if I actually succeed, lent doesn't actually start till Wednesday, and I don't actually know if I want to do this.

thanks for reading about my failure,

K-Wullums

J Say of the day: Prepare, practice, practice preparing

Post Vape Edit: Fuck those spiders. Within two minutes, I just experienced a whole range of emotions. It started with a defiant pride in my decision. Pride was followed by all sorts of rationalizations for my behavior. "I love smoking, it reminds me that I'm suicidal!" "I love the pain it causes. it reminds me I'm alive!" "I love the stomach ache it gives me!" All those rationalizations led me back to one inescapable fact: I haven't gone without this in almost two years. The last time I was without nicotine was the last time I gave it up for lent. The "spiders" in my brain are just neuroreceptors that haven't got their fill and are slowly dying. I guess their pain comes to me as a craving. In a way, they're kind of like coal miners. What if tomorrow we had a new fuel and the infrastructure to put it in place? I bet those coal miners wouldn't know what to do. Society would feel the burden of the suddenly unemployed and the only way to fulfill them would be to use coal. The same thing is happening in my brain when I deprive myself of nicotine. There are parts of my brain whose sole purpose is to congratulate me on taking another puff. When I don't, they go haywire. I figure I make the decision to hit my vape pen once every half hour or so on average. (more during the day, less when I sleep) So, for the next 40 days, I'll have to make the right decision roughly 1920 times. That's a shitload of Jolly Ranchers. Even the sugar free ones aren't low calorie. I really wish my phone hadn't broken.