Two days without a cigarette. I've had some time to crankily ponder why I'm quitting.

I'm quitting out of spite.

I think I'm the last man alive who actually buys his own goddamned smokes. Fuck this healthy lifestyle bullshit, fuck white teeth, fuck aerobic capacity, fuck the ability to go through my day without feeding a dependency, fuck fucking over the tobacco companies, fuck all that, because that all is just icing on the cake compared to being able to tell someone to fuck off, I don't have any cigarettes and never will again. Who needs nicotine when you got schadenfreude?

I'm quitting out of self-respect.

It's the cigarette bums who are compelling me to quit. I live in a neighborhood with people that drop by our house just to bum a cigarette. A couple of the more socially-inept among them ask for a cigarette before saying 'hello'. I've even had someone call me up once around midnight to ask me if I had any cigarettes. All my roommates smoke, but I'm the only one with solvent finances, so whenever I buy a pack of cigarettes, it gets exhausted quickly. I effectively have a pack-a-day habit, but I only smoke through half a pack before the rest of them wind up diverted. It's insidious, the power the beggar has over the sucker, and I'm having none of it.

I'm not so much quitting smoking as starting to beat the shit out of life and shake the lunch money out of its pockets, with the purpose and focus that only comes from a nicotine fit.