Win Some, Lose Some

The dissertation is increasingly plump, full of literature reviews and data and delightful graphs and greek letters dancing around in a swirl of theory. This makes me happy.

I failed at my attempt to quit smoking. This made me sad.

But not as sad as I started to feel when I no longer had my little paper crutch. After biking home the other day in a mere t-shirt and jeans, I was soaked in sweat and the stale salty grime of walking the campus earlier that day. It clearly says October on my calendar, and yet, San Diego refuses to conform to my conception of fall. Palm tree fronds don't change colors and fall to the ground. The sun beats down on my pink and freckled skin just as cheerfully and obstinately as it did in July. The air is still warm, and that smell---that smell of fall that I have so longed for and once loved--is nowhere to be found. I still remember it well--that cloying, disgustingly sweet smell as the fallen leaves begin to decay mixed with the crispness of the cooling air, perhaps smoke from a nearby leaf fire. God, I miss that smell.

So, coming home as I did the other day, I began to sob (and as those of you who have fallen into the nicotine trap and have tried--successfull or unsuccessfully--to extricate yourselves know, when one quits smoking, one goes a bit nutty). But deprivation-induced insanity aside, I feel like I'm trapped on vacation. Imagine going to the Bahamas and, instead of flying home two weeks later, you are forced to stay for five, six years. The beach isn't fun after the first month, you begin to recoil in disgust at the sight of yet another bikini or midriff-baring top, another backwards-turned baseball cap, another sunny day in your beautifully bright prison cell.

So I smoked. And although I wish it weren't true, I feel much much better now.

Perhaps I will just have to suck it up--it being nicotine--until I can go home. Back to four seasons and decaying leaves and blessedly cloudy days and smells on which I'd happily become high once again.