Cigarette Break

(Originally published on Medium)

Hi! How have you been? I hope you are well. It feels so good to sneak out from this adulthood routine for half an hour, or an hour, who cares. We’re here. Feels good doesn’t it? So much like breaking the rules in high school times when we skipped classes to do nothing or coming home past our curfews. Only the difference now is the rules are not made an institution on or our parents, but made by our own self-critic in collaboration with Responsibilities and Anxiety. Those two are a hell of a pair.

I know there are probably a dozen of other things we need, or suppose, to do now; the presentation, the deadline, the email, the Whatever-That-Is-That-Pays-Our-Bills. But it’s okay now, it can wait. I’m just glad we make the time to be here, sit down together, smoking cigarette that you have been planning to cut down these past months yet here you are with your second pack of the day, it’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s just stare at the sky. That big blue sky. Do you see how the cloud moves as if they were walking themselves to catch the rush hour train? No? Maybe not.

Here, we get to remember even for just a minute about the things we’d always wanted to do when we were teenagers, or the late night drive to the beach when you accidentally fell over but hell it was so much fun, or the day I cried at the school library because the boy I had a crush on just moved to the States, or the prom night when everyone else at our age was busy getting wasted yet all we did was just driving around the city and listening to the radio, or the day we fell in love on our own from the corner of a live music stage. Oh, the innocence!

The ashes of your cigarette is now hanging off your finger, nearly touching your middle finger as you can feel the heat is getting stronger. But you don’t seem to bother. Do you remember your first cigarette? How shaky your lips when you were terrified getting caught by your parents. And somehow it just grows on you, you said. Now it’s the only thing that keeps you sane amidst all the Pressures and Expectations. I’d just smile, neither agreeing or disagreeing. Whatever floats your boat, I said. We’re all worship something in our own way anyway.

Ah, I think our time is running out. ’Cause I know we both have started to think about the buzzing notifications and possible miscalls on our phones that we left upstairs, or the unread yellow envelop shaped notice on your mailbox. How long have we been away for? An hour and a half? It’s good to have the time to sit down with you. On how we get to reminisce the things that makes us once happy; if happy’s too much as the word seems so strange and mythical now, maybe things that makes us okay is good enough. Okay is good right? Okay is great. Cause at least, if there isn’t anything now that gives us goosebumps or butterfly feeling, we were once had it. I’m sure we can hold on to it and don’t waste it all away for nothing.

Okay. Make sure we do this regularly, so you don’t caught up too much on your thoughts, or cigarette.

I’m going that way.