I might not be able to blame her for my choice in menthols(go easy), but I can blame her for promoting just about everything else shitty about smoking cigarettes.

In fact, I blame Lana del Rey for a lot of my problems. If it wasn’t for her repetitive, self-loathing, self-pitying music I might have tried to stop hating myself a little bit sooner. But instead, 16 year old me drove around in her brand new 2014 Hyundai Elantra chain smoking Newports and blasting Florida Kilos unaware that yayo was slang for cocaine.

Most importantly though, cigarettes. Evidently I was at an impressionable age, so when I saw a gorgeous, famous 25 year old smoking stogie after stogie onstage while singing a catchy love song I wasn’t concerned about the stinky and annoying habit I would go back and forth with for years to come.

Lana forgot to mention how nasty your fingernails smell, how nasty everything smells, and how the fucking smell never stops smelling. She didn’t mention that I wouldn’t just smell like a person in an anti-tobacco commercial, I would feel like one too. It was proven impossible to feel my best when I constantly felt like a lost patch of good ole’ LA smog.

But as it turns out, years later(still a hardcore fan at this point) I was scrolling through the twitter of one of her fan pages and saw a link to a recent interview of hers. In this interview she was asked about her relationship with Barrie James O’neill, her opinions on fame, and then the conversation turned to her cigarette usage. When asked how many cigarettes she thought she smoked in a day, she said an answer that defined my understanding of misused fame.

“I smoke a lot of cigarettes. Don’t pay too much attention to how many. I never really inhale, I just puff them.” 

Well fuck, if 15 year old me knew that then I wouldn’t have put myself through what I can only describe as self induced hazing. Day after day I conditioned myself to do something that my body immediately had a negative reaction to because I wanted so badly to connect the trouble, sex appeal, and questionably beautiful immorality Lana oozed to the wounds in my own life. I found that the wounds of a 25 year old are much deeper than ones of a girl 10 years her junior, and that by trying to relate the two injuries I was only debilitating myself.

me to me circa 2014: omg light dis sweet 305 & hang it out of ur mouth for 10 secs while u take 6 dif selfies of same general facial expression to get the the most dark and weird yet cute pic while simultaneously wasting over a forth of the cigarette

Inevitably my image of her shattered after that interview. If I couldn’t trust that she wasn’t promoting unhealthy actions just for the coolness factor to the vulnerable fans her brand targets, then there was nothing about her that I could. And unfortunately, the authenticity she lacked proved absent in a few other girls I’ve since met with a Lana del Rey facade.

Clearly, I am using Lana’s cigarette habits as a metaphor for something much deeper. We all have an image we display to others and whether it correlates to who we truly are or not, it’s how we want others to perceive us. Contrarily, I believe that our true person and facade either mesh into one or battle extensively until one can’t take residence anymore. The effort required to keep playing both parts is unsustainable and adds longterm stress to the human psyche.

So naturally, if I fuck up and buy another pack please know that it’s true. Please know that I marched my ass up to the only gas station on this godforsaken mountain, looked directly into the cashiers disaproving eyes, and choked out can-I-have-the-marlboro-menthol-shorts-with-the-gold-stripe-and-green-box-please while still wheezing from the strenuous medium paced 0.2 mile walk I just embarrassed my fitbit with. Know that regardless of those things, I still had a cigarette in my mouth and lit before even reaching the exit. I want you to know these things not to influence you to do the same, but to let you know you’re not alone if you do.

Because we all do things we regret; be it the things we never did, the things we shouldn’t have done, and everything in between. I regret every pack of cigarettes I coerce myself into buying and sometimes I even regret the packs I don’t. Nevertheless, we can only turn our regret into lessons learned when we stop seeking to find the right way by taking the hard way, but rather seek to take right way in the first place.

So no, I don’t really think it matters to anyone if you just take puffs. My only hope is people aren’t surprised when you start to cough.

xoxo,

Meg

PS: What personas do you display to others that might not be true to who you are? What made you think that this persona(s) is better to show others than the real you? If you were going to make the changes to become your more authentic self, how would you go about making them?