A Millennial Looks at 40

For most of my life, I used smoking as an excuse to avoid the hard realities facing my generation. Now I'm finally ditching the cigarettes and learning how to be an adult.

- By Ottessa Moshfegh

Everything smelled like cigarette smoke when I was a kid. You could smoke in an airplane. You could smoke in a taxi. You could smoke in Burger King. I smoked my first cigarette when I was nine. It took a lot of practice to learn to inhale and exhale without choking, but I was passionate, and I got very good at it. Self-taught, as they say. Imagine a ten-year-old girl on Rollerblades doing figure eights on a quiet evening road in the suburbs, flicking a butt into the neighbor's flower garden. That was me. I smoked riding my bike at night, no hands, with my eyes closed. That was freedom. I smoked waiting for my mom to pick me up from my piano lesson. That was relaxing. I stole cigarettes from my aunt, who bought Chesterfields by the carton and never noticed if a pack went missing here or there. At some point, I'd heard that smoking stunts your growth. That's why I started. I did not want to grow up.