[Everything between the thick grey lines was written 2:48 AM 12/17/2003 and posted as dated on this entry. I wanted to wait, to make sure I still felt this upset, before I posted it. I do. *curses*]
Well fuck.
Having a smoker as a housemate is not working out. I consistently underestimate my sensitivity to smoke, even just lingering aftereffects on a smoker's clothing and personal items. Dammit.
My eyes sting all the time. I am seriously considering shaving my head, or at least cutting my hair very, very short. I don't really want to do that, especially going into winter; my head would be fucking cold. But my hair picks up smoke-smell so thoroughly. If I wash it before bed to get out the smell, I just wake stuffed up. Giving myself pneumonia is not helping the smoky problem.
And of course, I'm not supposed to say anything to Sin. He doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't have perpetually pink eyes, either. Fuck. I was hoping to spend December getting my eyes used to contacts again, but I just can't handle that now. Smoke is enough to bother my eyes. If I tried wearing little plastic bits on my corneas, I would probably blind myself just to make them stop stinging. More realistically, my eyes would stream with tears all the damn time, which would freeze upon exiting the house into a South Dakota winter -- but oh, the purity of the Midwest air! Free of smoke entrapped within feeble walls. It's air that is clean and good to breathe. It doesn't hurt, except from the cold.
Dammit! I'm supposed to fucking know better! I should have just moved out when the new housemate wanted to move in, but it's too late now to have him assume my part of the lease. I'm stuck here.
My hair reeks of smoke. It's not as strong as sometimes, but it's there. I can smell it. It rakes across my eyeballs from the back of my head. It scrapes my sinuses. I'm going to have to take a shower before sleeping, it seems. I've been showering like it's my new religion lately, but it's not helping. That damn smell creeps back onto me before my hair is even dry. It nests in my hair and it fucking festers. If I shower now to get rid of it, I suppose the new housemate will be upset with me and complain in the morning.
I'm not fucking trying to be this sensitive to smoke, goddammit. I just fucking am.
I want to be back at my mom's house. It's clean and absolutely smoke-free. It's nice there. I can smell my coat there now. Leather picks up smoke-stench and doesn't let go. I can feel clean there, almost.
I will not take my sewing scissors to my hair. I won't. I like my hair long. I know this. I want to grow it out, flowing over my shoulders -- and teeming with odor. Ew.
I can't go running back to mommy all the time. If I'm going to take online classes this spring, I need to be at my house, not hers. I don't have unfettered Internet access from her house. I have to be stuck here, seeping myself in that fucking wretched odor.
I'm going to go insane. I almost miss the psych ward. It was clean. No smoking. People had to go outside to smoke. When I was there, it was cold enough out that they had to wear coats out, so the coats caught most of the smell. It was almost fucking pleasant, compared to being surrounded by this God-awful SMELL.
And of course it's my problem. I'm supposed to be fucking straight-edge now, not even a fucking cup of cocoa for me, and my body wildly rejects smoke riddled with cyanide, carbon monoxide, and a host of other dangers -- and that's because something is wrong with me?! Fucking hell, no!
Dammit. I feel like --shit, I don't even have the words.
My clothes are beginning to faintly smell of smoke. I can't tell when I'm swimming in the garbage, but at my mom's, I can tell. My jeans, my jacket, even my bra and socks. Everything.
I am crying right now. I hate this. I can't even have a decent conversation with my grandfather because he always smells so strongly of smoke, but I had thought my problem with that was that he smoked so heavily. I stupidly assumed that, and also that a person of my own age would therefore not smell so strongly of smoke -- even though I would have realised otherwise, had I just thought logically for a moment.
I wanted this to work. I wanted to dislike the smell but be physically unaffected by it. And that simply isn't happening. I'm expected to run out and spend $30 I don't have on an air filter for my bedroom because I'm the one with the problem. I'm the one whose body knows that shit does not belong in me, and I'm being penalised for it.
My bedroom is above the front porch, which is where smoking happens. The smoking housemate has said he could go outside to smoke, but he hasn't yet. He has to smoke right below my room. Why can't he go outside, like he suggested himself? Why can't he smoke on the back porch instead of the front? He could. He doesn't.
I fucking hate this. My eyes fucking hurt and they never get any better. They did improve a little tonight, when I walked out to the thrift shop and bought myself some movies. No smoking on the premises. Maybe that's why I stayed there a full half hour in that one little room -- just enjoying myself and not knowing why. Certainly I didn't have the money to buy all the things I wanted there. I bought out of the discount bin, as usual. But I wanted to stay and investigate everything, using any excuse to stay there. Only when my feet began complaining did I leave.
There's not a lot I can add to this now. There's more reasons I dislike this housemate, but above all, I hate that smoke. I could deal with him as the jerk he is if he just didn't contaminate me with second-hand shit smell.
At least I have a ready-made excuse to stay away for awhile: Christmas and New Year's. Like hell I'm gonna stay and watch my housemates get hammered while I have to remain stone cold sober! Fuck no. After 2004 begins, I don't know. I'm going to have to decide if I can handle classes while cursing the day the new housemate moved in.
I do know this much without having to think twice: The lease is up in May. If the smoker signs on for another year, I'm out, even if it means having to move back in with my mother. I'll be 23 and perfectly okay with having clean country air to breathe.
Such a sin it is, to sully such perfect air and environs. Even without the allergic reaction in my eyes, it would still make me want to cry.