Saturday, July 18, 2009

July 18, 2009 9:21 p.m.


Light up and breathe deeply. You are smelling the residue of my last fifteen minutes.

There are, according to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They are not necessarily experienced in order, and not everyone goes through every stage. When I quit smoking four weeks ago, I skipped the first three stages and went straight to depression. Real, genuine depression. In the interest of full disclosure, I was also reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" that week, a combination that in hindsight was not a cocktail for emotional contentment.

And now I've found a new stage, one which hasn't made the textbooks yet. It's the one you learned from your parents.

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

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