Whenever I pull a cigarette out of its pack, I don’t get the sense of relief that so many people do knowing that they’re about to feed their brain some soothing nicotine; instead, my body tenses up. For years, I never understood this—why my heart rate increases or my palms sweat—until I thought about it properly and realized that this response goes back to when I was a teenager.
Hiding behind a building at the back of my school, I would light a cigarette while ducking from teachers. Later, I would walk through my front door covered in cheap perfume, trying to mask that familiar smell from my mother. I confessed this to her a few years ago. Her reaction: “Do you think I’m an idiot?” It was the sort of teenage caper that I now look back on fondly.
