Every morning starts the same. You open your eyes. You reach for the lighter. And the world gets permission to wait another five minutes.
You don't think of it as a transaction. But it is a transaction. The most unfavorable one you've ever been a part of.
You give money. You get paper wrapped around tobacco. You give time. You get a few minutes of imagined calm. You give health. You get a promise that next time will be easier.
But it never gets easier. It only becomes more necessary. As if you built a wall between yourself and a normal state, and now you pay every day for the right to have a gate in that wall.
Youth feels eternal. It should be eternal. But the smoke does its work unnoticed, like moths in a closet. You wear the same clothes, look in the same mirror, and then one day you notice your skin has become thinner. Your teeth have changed shade. Your voice has lost its depth. And you can't remember the last time you woke up feeling fully restored.
Around you, people live fully. They run in the mornings, travel with just one backpack, laugh so loudly you can hear them three floors up, try new dishes, and sense every nuance of flavor. They aren't better than you. They just haven't paid the price you've paid.
The hardest part isn't quitting. The hardest part is admitting you let this happen at all. Admitting that something foreign has taken up space inside you and demands a constant fee. It's humiliating. And it's the truth.
But the truth has another side. It's that you can close the account at any moment. Your body doesn't hold a grudge. It's been waiting. It knows how to heal, cleanse, restore. With each day without poison, you'll take back what you once gave away. First β smells. Then β your breath. Then β the taste of life you'd forgotten.
No one can make this choice for you. But anyone can make it right now. Not tomorrow. Not on Monday. Not after the last cigarette in the pack. But in this second, as you read these lines.
Imagine what your morning will be like in a month without it. Not the morning that starts with a cough and a flame. But the one that starts with a deep breath and the realization that today, you belong only to yourself.