Writing not smoking

It’s been three weeks since I put out the spliffs for good – and despite this being one of the hardest periods of my life, I’m finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

In the past 21 days, I’ve started to see my environment for what it really is: years of numbing loneliness and self-hatred, masked by smoke and codependence on men who never truly deserved my time.

There’s a hole inside me that this baby is gently filling, a space marijuana had kept me from ever facing.

When I kicked out my partner – the father of this child – I said I couldn’t have become sober or left him without her. I have a feeling she’s a girl, though I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong about men, about love, about what safety feels like. My nervous system has been clouded over for as long as I can remember, and I’ve ignored a million red flags in the name of “hope.”

When hope walked out the door and called me psycho, a ghostly yet comforting silence filled me. As if the bees had come to a halt and my blood poured a steady rhythm for the first time.

But I don’t want to keep saying I don’t know why I do this. I do know: I want to be loved. Desperately. I have so much love to give – sometimes to a fault.

I’m lucky, though. I have some of the best friendships anyone could ask for. I’m good at helping people open up, at seeing what makes them shine, at connecting the unconnectable. I’ve always known how to build community.

Romance, though, that’s been my undoing. Every time. But it’s not too late to break the pattern. The only way out is through healing.

I can’t fuck it away, sleep it away, smoke it away, or drink it away anymore. My baby’s due in spring, and she’ll need a mum who can face hard things head-on, not hide from them.

I’ve never been more willing. I’ve never been more firm in my resistance to shallow intimacy – not out of bitterness, but out of clarity. The chase for dopamine in a lover’s eyes, touch, or words doesn’t bring me hope anymore.

Over the past three days, I’ve noticed something wild: my ability to meet people, to create genuine friendships, has tripled. Sobriety and singledom – once terrifying – now feel like a kind of freedom I never saw coming.

My sister says she hopes I’ll find a partner to support me, but for the first time in my life, I feel ready to stand alone. I don’t feel like hiding. I just don’t want to give what isn’t mine to give.

This body isn’t fully mine right now; it feels borrowed. But as long as I keep creating, and listening, I’ll be led where I’m meant to go.

Three weeks ago I quit smoking. Today, I am learning to breathe again.