Letter to cigarettes

Dear cigarettes,

I started smoking you when I was 10 years old. I was young then, and felt so alone in the world. I was an abused little girl, I had nobody else to turn to.

The first time I smoked you, it felt so horrible, and yet I was hooked. I like the way you burned, I liked the way I felt like I was choking. It was the same way I was choked when I was 2 years old by my abuser.

My relationship with you has been complicated. Sometimes I loved you more than any person in my life, sometimes I hated you for the power you held over me. You comforted me and soothed me during my darkest times, you were my greatest source of fun and pleasure. Often I used you as a long, drawn-out method of suicide, hoping that someday you would kill me.

I wish, now, that I didn’t have to break up with you. I wish that this could be a long-term committed relationship, but it can’t. I could stay with you the rest of my life, but I know in my heart you would lead me to an early grave. Instead, I choose to be in a relationship with myself, to honor my own health and well-being more than what I had with you. I choose to love myself, today, more than I love you.

Forever in my heart, but not in my body
Love,

Asa