Dreams

So everyone I have spoken to who has quit smoking has had dreams about smoking. I am no exception. I am in my mom’s living room and a bunch of my friends from high school show up and start smoking and I bum a drag just as my mother walks in, or I’m out at a club and craving and craving and end up stealing/borrowing/buying a smoke and lighting it up just as Michka shows up, or something like that. Sometimes I am smoking already when I suddenly notice that I am doing so and remember that I have quit, so what am I doing? I had the same kinds of dreams when I gave up meat, but of course substitute the cigarette with a cheeseburger and my mom with my former girlfriend, a vegan. It’s pretty normal I think.

The thing that is cool right now is that I have now had not one, but two dreams in which others around me smoked and I rejected it! This may seem unexciting to anyone who has not experienced these dreams, but for me it is a big step.

In the first dream, which I had a couple of weeks ago, actually, I was at a party at someone’s house. The someone was Charlotte Gainsbourg, now that I recall, although in my dream I think she was a mixture of Gainsbourg and my friend A. Anyway, we were talking at the kitchen table and she went to light up a cigarette. I said, “Oh, you’re going to smoke? Then I have to leave.” She asked, “Why?” I answered, “I just quit. I can’t be around smoking right now.” She shrugged and lit up her cigarette. I was pissed and hurt because I thought a good time with me was worth a bit of time without a smoke. But anyway, I prepared to leave without saying anything about it. Michelle walked in and asked why I was leaving. When I told her, she said, “Okay, just give me a minute.” And she lit up a smoke! Which is funny because Michelle has never smoked in real life, smart girl. Anyway, I was so angry, and part of me was like, maybe I should just give up and do it, but the other part was like, no fucking way! I’ve worked hard for this! So I didn’t smoke and went home very angry.

The second dream was last night. I was staying at this sort of shared villa thing in Venezuela that I inherited from someone somehow, I forget. It was run by these hippy Americans who would dress in strange costumes to scare the hammerhead sharks away from the smaller animals on the shore. Poor sharks. Anyway, I was talking to some of the Americans outside, including this girl who looked like Mary Stuart Masterson circa Some Kind of Wonderful (which was on TV last night, go figure). She started going through the pockets of my jacket, and I got a bit defensive. “What are you doing?” I asked sharply, to which she responded, a bit put out that I seemed suspicious, “I’m looking for cigarettes.” I replied, again rather forcefully, “There aren’t any in there; I don’t smoke anymore,” and took my jacket back from her. She looked miffed, so I explained that it was a recent quit so I was sensitive about it. I didn’t want Mary Stuart Masterson to be mad at me. Then her friends started chiming in about how it’s fine for me to say that I don’t smoke now, but I’ll give in sooner or later, or that they will never be able to quit, so good for me, in this really sarcastic, condescending tone. Those hippies weren’t very loving, if you ask me. I got pissed and argued back on every stupid point, at one point even restraining myself from getting really nasty in response. I can’t remember exactly what my nasty response was going to be, as dream language sometimes makes less sense when I’m awake. And again in the end I didn’t smoke. I didn’t spend much time with them anymore, either. Mary Stuart Masterson lookalike be damned!

The point of highlighting these dreams is that even in my subconscious I have quit smoking, am adamant about succeeding and resistant to peer pressure. It’s a big deal to me because it means I am not taking this journey on lightly, convincing myself that I am really committed while secretly making plans to fall off the wagon later. My brain says we’re in it for real—yay for my brain!