Inhale/Exhale

Inhale/Exhale

Byron Lin

Sabin hated his poisonous habits, every last one of them. Cigarettes, drinking, pot, the works… he counted himself lucky he had never gotten into the crazier stuff – the hardcore drugs like cocaine or heroin. Hell, he’d never even tripped on shrooms or popped painkillers. Even still, the stuff he was currently into bothered him. 

Inhale, exhale, easy as breathing.

He stood now on the balcony of his apartment with its vantage point out over a mundane little throughway. Shelley had been around for the majority of this past week, showing up to bum a cigarette or two and share some good talk, you know, just stand out there in the freezing cold, shooting the shit. He didn’t mind in the slightest. It was all worth it, really; time well spent with a greatly appreciated friend. 

This place had gotten weirder and distorted lately. Between the blackout, the double blizzard, and near anarchy (even with cops on full alert) on the streets, this place didn’t seem quite so familiar anymore. Classes had stopped all week, only the campus dining hall was still open besides all the residence halls and apartments, obviously. Boredom set in, as inevitably did, after the drinking, eating, and general laziness had lost its novelty in the face of all this sudden freedom. Almost another Winter Break - a second one, as it were.

Inhale, exhale, just as easy as breathing.

He really needed to stop stalling and quit something already – either drop all of his classes and just withdraw for the semester, or get rid of all these negative vibes around him. What good were they, really? Your choice of slow, insidious death by withered lung, cirrhosis of the liver, melted brain cells (or so all the detractors claim – he had heard of some controversial science to contrary, that being stoned could actually make you smarter instead). 

Nothing made sense anymore. Not his sleep schedule, how he was going to cope with that semester’s workload, the sudden resemblance to the Arctic Circle, being old enough to legally indulge in booze but still young enough to tend to overdo it. 

Best times of our lives, my ass. 

Ambivalence, yes… that was the word he was looking for. Especially about this old high school flame that suddenly struck a spark? Where did this come from? Sabin doubted it, much as he did a great many other things. And eight to ten pages for a creative writing assignment also known as a piece of short fiction? What should he write about? Maybe about a boy and his sled…well now, that’s not being very innovative. Then again, why not be somewhat topical and comment on the current state of affairs, even if it is a tad passé by now. 

Inhale, exhale, still just as easy as breathing. 

To be fully honest, he wasn’t even sure why he smoked cigarettes as often as he did. Before the beginning of the past semester, he had hardly ever smoked tobacco (pot was a different story altogether – no pun intended) but he fell into it as a social thing, it turns out. He and his roommates had people over all the time. Hangouts being what they were at this turbulent, mind-numbing time usually amounted to copious amounts of smoking, drinking, and fucking, but not necessarily all in that order, or even for one of those to be included in the routine. 

This week alone, something of a birthday bender, he had probably had more cigs than in months, since the first semester had ended or so. 

While back home for the end of December and most of January, he had cut back to booze and bud. He hadn’t quite been twenty-one then, but he was getting more acclimated to drinking. Now that he was of proper age, he found himself to be more resistant to its harsher effects. Vomiting and being hungover are not the best ways to ring in one’s third decade of existence.

Sabin had almost reached the filter when he started coughing madly. Growling his frustrated disgust, he threw the stub of cigarette to the ground just under his shoe, where he snuffed it out before placing it in the plastic jar of its abandoned comrades. Shelley was promising a few of her own in return out of gratitude for the last few days, along with fresh supplies of milk, bread, eggs, and liquid hand soap. 

Taking the carton from his coat pocket, which still had one cig left in it, he tossed it at the nearby tree just in front of him. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. He grabbed his lucky red lighter out too, flicking it in a nervous habit, passing his off-hand over the tiny flame, perhaps to fascinate himself or fixate his mind on something else than the craving to have another cigarette. 

All of them, he and his roommates, and experienced mild withdrawal from their adherence to constant spliffing, that is, joints rolled with tobacco and weed. He would face what’s next with his chin up nice and proud. Man up, as some would like to say. Or maybe he could just deal with it tomorrow. It was getting late/early.

Inhale, exhale, it’s always easier than breathing.