Writing not smoking

Not just green – literally everything illegal, everything deemed harmful to the tiny life growing inside me.

This past week I’ve heard voices in my head, thrown tantrums, sweated through sheets, considered ending it all, and felt a crushing regret for feeding my addiction over eleven years. I’ve seen exactly how selfish I’ve been. And yes, I know hormones are amplifying the withdrawals, but losing my ability to smoke – to numb out for “just another four hours” – has left me spiraling.

It feels like I’ve swapped my happy-go-lucky user identity for a psychotic body double: paranoid that every move I make could end in disaster for my baby, for me, for everything. I’m controlling, suffocating, crying hysterically the moment I feel challenged. The OBGYN team following my pregnancy deemed me an urgent psychiatric case – but in SUS, Brazil’s public health system, “urgent” still puts you 227th in line.

This probably isn’t the inspirational testimonial you want to read if you’re thinking about quitting green for good. But this is what it actually looks like – an ugly, unglamorous process I’m choosing to trust as the shedding before a great bloom.

Here’s the strange gift inside the chaos: I can smell bullshit from a mile away now – my own included. Every impulse, every subtle manipulation, every boundary I tried to erase – it’s all tangible again. And while I feel deeply depressed about the person I’ve become, I also feel… equipped. Or at least willing. Being “ready” doesn’t mean waving a magic wand and changing overnight. It means accepting the things I cannot change and finding the courage to confront the things I can.

Writing this blog is humiliating, but I’m determined to keep going.

As a teenager, I found catharsis writing romanticized poetry about my substance abuse. The TV show Skins made rebellion look poetic, and I wanted to outdo its fiction – “impress” people with my total lack of self-respect and disregard for the law. In honesty, I still break some laws here (so do the government and military police), but the fantasy of destruction isn’t as seductive anymore.

Back then, I called myself a radical feminist for doing what I wanted, silencing men’s opinions, pouring gasoline on my own fire. I thought it was power. I thought it was self-respect. Now I’d give anything to go back and show that girl what true respect looks like.

Today’s reflection is less of a victory lap and more of a whine – in the absence of a wine.