How I became a smoker

I smoke since I was 19, which is funny as, until 17, I was a fierce anti-smoker. I thought that smoking is the stupidest thing ever and I looked snobbishly at my classmates who couldn't find a more original way of proving that they have grown up. How I softened, I have no idea. All I know is that, in a period of two years, my random, once-in-a-while cigarette of 17 turned into regular, I-buy-my-own-packet smoking.

My parents did not smoke. My mother had never started, my father used to but had quit when I was 4. That was also the age I learnt the harmful effects of tobacco. Which, apart from making me a very informed child, deprives me from using the excuse of ignorance.

I do not even remember how I started my occasional smoking. I do remember my first cigarette though. I was 14 and, dead curious to try its taste, I asked a cigarette from my mother, who took one from my aunt and gave it to me. Which, contrary to what one might think, was a wise move: my curiosity vanished without having to either buy cigarettes myself (=19 more waiting to be smoked) or ask one from the group who smoked next to the toilets during the breaks, thus revealing myself as potentially one of them, thus welcome member in their foggy group (=guaranteed cigarettes for the rest of the year).

I also remember when I consciously decided to buy my first packet. It was during a period of stress, sadness and desperation (in different words, after a break-up) and it just felt right. I suppose I had underestimated the power of the image: in all the movies and TV shows I had seen till then, that was where the distressed protagonist would find comfort eventually: alone, in the dark, with the red flame lighting their face as they inhaled deeply. Plus, two years of only occasional smoking had proved me that I can control it.

To be 100% sure, a few months after buying my first packet, I succesfully quit for a period. Pleased and persuaded, I restarted, then requit and then restarted and then requit, until, one beautiful day, I decided to stop playing and quit once and for all; I managed to last only a few days.

Since then, my original "occasional smoker" has been replaced by an "occasional non-smoker" - I count about five unsuccesful attempts to quit smoking, after each of which my parents desperately move their heads and say "we had told you so". Me, I just roll snobbishly my eyes: I am never, ever, gonna admit to them that, yes, they were right on the first place.