I started smoking to be like Pam. We were co-workers at Cloth World during my first year living in Florida. I was a junior in high school with few friends, and I liked her. A lot. She seemed sophisticated and, though only a year older than I, much more mature and grown up with a knowing air floating around her imagined aura. I never was really addicted, but I became comfortable with the habit of smoking with Pam during our breaks. As I eventually began meeting people, I found myself among other casual smokers, who, like me, mostly lit up at the pizza place after football games, while cruising the streets of Bradenton, or at the homes of those of us whose parents didn’t mind. My parents minded. A lot. And I consequently did everything in my power to hide it from them. Though I’m pretty positive my mother’s sniffer couldn’t have missed it having been a former smoker herself with similar tendencies to try and hide such things from her parents. But for whatever reason, she never confronted me.
I continued to smoke socially throughout college, sometimes burning through an entire pack in one evening, but even so, could go at least hours, if not occasionally days without a smoke. A few days before I was to get married, my husband-to-be, however, issued an ultimatum. Quit or I won’t go through with the ceremony. I was obedient, and simply quit. Cold turkey. And I’ve never looked back. But what strikes me about both my starting and stopping is that I did both to please someone else, or at least to fit into an expected persona.
Fast forward almost 30 years. I was in my early fifties when I developed a chronic skin sensitivity. I had been in the habit of using the exact same products and skin cleansing rituals for decades, but suddenly, it seemed, I woke up one day and I was allergic to all my old standbys. I then tried everything I could think of to try and calm the various irritations. I went to the doctor for medications, purchased over-the-counter remedies from Oil of Olay, Pure Simple, Neutrogena, and came darn close to seeing a very expensive local dermatologist with her own line of skincare products that I knew would cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
But one morning in the midst of my desperation, I looked at my bathroom cupboard and drawers full of bottles, tubes, misters, sprays, and jars, and had an idea. What if I just kicked this habit too? Cold turkey. I had a small panic as I looked at my aging skin and couldn’t imagine how I’d manage without a moisturizer. I rationalized that maybe without using the facial cleanser, which possibly was designed to dry out my skin so that I would then buy the moisturizing product from the same manufacturer, my skin might adjust? I took the plunge.
I threw everything out so I wouldn’t be tempted. And I am saving hundreds of dollars a year as a result. The more I think about it, the more I realize I allowed myself to be marketed to. You need this. You should do this. I was using these products because someone was telling me to do it in order to fit a certain persona. My skin has adjusted, and gone are my laments. I’m now feeling very sophisticated, mature, and grown up, and I am the one telling me what to do.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2015
