It got worse every year

Two numbers settle this, and you already have both of them. The first is how many cigarettes it took to get you through a day in your first year, and what one actually did for you back then. Most people remember that early stretch as almost recreational. A few, on certain occasions, and the effect was noticeable enough to be the point. The second number is last year. Same question, honest answer. The count went up. The effect went down. Nobody ever sent you a notice about that revision, and you never once asked for one.

That is not aging, and it is not stress, and it is not your personality. The deal got rewritten every year, always in the same direction. Your body kept adjusting to the dose it was given, so the dose stopped landing, so the count crept up to chase a feeling that was quietly retreating ahead of it. You were charged more each year for less each year, and because the change arrived in slivers you never once experienced it as a price rise. A rate that climbs slowly enough feels like weather.

Which means the thing you were defending was not a steady state you could have kept forever. It had a direction, and the direction was down. Whatever last year cost you in money, in mornings, in breath, in how early the first one had to happen, next year was going to ask for more than that. This is the part the memory film never shows, because memory hands you the good early chapter and stays completely silent about the trend line running underneath it. You were not holding a position. You were sliding.

So be accurate about what you actually did. You did not give up a pleasure that would have sat still and behaved itself. You got off a slope, at whatever point you happened to catch it, and everything past that point is now cost you will simply never pay. Thank God you caught it here instead of five years further down, because five years further down is a heavier person to be. Tonight, write the two numbers side by side, first year and last year. Keep the paper. The trend argues for you better than any speech can.