Smoking

As I said in the last post, I was incredibly stressed out and depressed at the time. I started picking up some bad habits. Though I had considered myself a drinker before, I never actually drank regularly. There's just something about living at your mom's house that does that. I got drunk with my friends once, maybe twice a month. And would go out for a causal drink once every couple weeks. No big thing. I just never go around to having a daily beer, as some people do, living at my mom's.

Moving in with Mikey, there hasn't been a time when we haven't had beer in the refrigerator. And there is more liquor here than I've ever seen in one house. So because my mom isn't around with her judgment and disappointment, I've been free to drink all I want. So I had the nightly beer a couple times a week when we first moved in.

Stress and depression offers a great opportunity for alcohol to seem like a really good friend. During that month, I was having two, maybe three beers a night. Even on work nights, and school nights. I began smoking. Now, I've had a few cigarettes in my day. But I'd pretty much only have one if I was really drunk, and only if they were readily available. So I think since I was 17 and had my first one, I've had less than 30 cigarettes in my entire life. But during this time, it became somewhat of a routine for me.

There'd be nights where I'd have 3 beers, and I'd be up until 3, maybe 4 in the morning. Even on a work night when I'd have a shift at 8am. And I'd go out and have a cigarette. And it helped me relax, and helped me get my mind off the crap in my life and actually get to sleep.

Now, I subscribe to social networking sites. Livejournal, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Xanga...I'm on all that. And I write about my entire life on my livejournal. I've taken pride in the fact that despite having a close circle of friends who reads it, I write about my business in there as if nobody was reading it except me.

I made a journal entry about taking up smoking. About how it's not becoming a habit for me, and I don't forsee it becoming one. And I wrote about my whole depression and everything. Mikey read it and left this comment:

"no more smoking. absolutely none at or outside the house, ever. so probably a good idea to just straight up stop."

He deleted this comment immediately. So that anyone who read the post wouldn't see the comment. But I was able to see the comment because livejournal notifies me by email when I have a comment.

Here's the point. We signed the lease as non-smokers. Which we are. But Mikey is a paranoid guy. We live in a very nice, very suburbanized, relatively new housing development. You could leave the doors unlocked, windows open, with a flat screen TV in plain view, and nobody would come into or near the house. But Mikey insists on locking all the doors at all times, and always leaving the blinds shut so nobody sees what kind of stuff we have and get any bright ideas.

But his paranoia is to the point where he actually thinks that the landlord has "spies" or "informants" living in the neighborhood. Or that she drives by the house on a regular, random basis. and he thinks that if she sees us, or anyone smoking anything near or anround the house, we'll get evicted.

No smoking in the house? Absolutely. I'm with you 100% on that one. No smoking in the backyard? Well, AT LEAST it's outside, but it's still within the property. So fine, I'll agree on that one too. But he also insists that nobody smokes in front of the house, even on the public street, because even that would be grounds for our immediate eviction.

That's just a sample of how he tries to control me, tell me what to do, and how to live. And how he does it with such force as if he is an absolute authority figure over my life.