Why I Keep Coming Back to Smoking

The first time I started smoking, I was 14. A five-foot-five, 90-pound, pink-haired, baby-faced teenager desperate to be intimidating and formidable and taken seriously. Looking back at myself as a baby person from my lofty view of adulthood, I can see so well all the ways I chose to armor myself. The intentionally ill-fitting and torn clothes, the spikes around my wrists, the chains around my neck. It makes me laugh now to picture baby-me imagining that I could force others to see me as formidable so easily; by stepping into a costume or following a recipe I could assert power and remain safe; I could build a wall between myself and others that they could see through but could never safely climb.

We would sneak out into the woods or sit under the railway bridge down the road from my house. We would steal smokes from our parents or bribe our older siblings into