This final chapter presents the summary of the study conducted and the findings derived from the analysis and interpretation of the results. Moreover, this imparts the conclusions framed and recommendations derived thereafter.
There is certainly a lot to take away from the whole process and experience of making this research that has gone from only finding a sensible explanation on how smoking cigarettes is bad for one’s health—to something entirely different. Based on the discussion and interpretation of data, it can be inferred that smoking is one of the leading causes or risk-factors for attaining lung cancer. Furthermore, the findings and results of the study states that smoking does not only harm the lungs alone but the entire body as well. The harmful effect of smoking is holistically felt by the body, inside and outside and in systems of what remains of the person.
However, smoking cigarettes can be the passageway to the remembrance of certain occasions in one’s life—the distinct yet familiar sound of your name in the mouth of your lover, now only a resonance inside your head, or the old T-shirt tucked inside your closet and how it still bears the smell of his deodorant; the filth of the city and how it weighs on your skin at the end of the day; even hollow halls, empty seats, the cold space in your bed may resurrect a certain memory—a certain presence—regardless of how fond or phlegmatic you are about that memory.
For example: the first time I smoked, the taste of cigarette reminded me of my mom, and it’s not because she is a staunch smoker—she doesn’t even smoke—but because she always, always tells me not to. And at first, I promised myself that I wouldn’t learn, wouldn’t even try. I didn’t believe that it could relieve stress or help ease pain. How could a stick made of grass and paper and sickness actually help me numb whatever baggage I am feeling? And then I learned how to use it, and it became my best friend. If every stick of cigarette lands on my lips to listen to every story my mouth wants to tell, I’d keep all the butts of every cigarette I’ve smoked and just show them to anyone who wants to know my story. “Here, this is my story. It might suffocate you,” I’d say, and let them savor in the smoke that is my life.
I like the idea of smoking—that we find a moment or so of peace in a stick that may or may not eventually rest us eternally in peace. Moreover, its bitter taste and cooling effect would later remind me of a certain occasion: this beautiful boy and I sitting in silence for a long time. It was not the awkward kind of silence, it’s the kind that actually fills out the void more than what noises can. He was a Cancer and I was a Pisces. We fit perfectly, our personalities matched like salt and pepper. But that time, the existence of silence felt more desired rather than just because we have nothing to talk about—words felt unnecessary. I know that, that night, we could have defeated the silence if only one of us bothered to speak, but only the exchange of smoke from our cigarettes seemed to be in conversation.
And then, intoxicated with the chemical I fed my body, the heaviness of events from earlier that day, and the sudden onset of a certain lightness, the smoke is a storm that takes away the plethora of muddled thoughts, leaving me in a state of foggy blankness—a tabula rasa, if you will, and now I let him take control of me. He saw what I have been hiding underneath my clothes. The clouds under my arms, the salt on my knees and elbows, the hills on my stomach, the plotted soil on my groin, the coins on my legs. I looked away from him because I was embarrassed by the possessions of my body. But from that moment on, I swear, I believed that God can sometimes be too tired to function. That night, I had the deepest conversation I ever had, without words.
Now, it is just a memory. Although months have already passed since that metamorphosis, still, everything is as clear and bright as the sun during high noon. Every time I hold a stick of cigarette to my mouth, or even when the thought of smoking crosses my mind, or even when I hear the slightest utterance of the word cigarette, the memory is recalled. The cigarette now symbolizes what has transpired that night, more so what has transpired with that boy, who, like the smoke of every cigarette, vanished into thin air without any trace or want of remembrance.
But he is remembered anyway. I still fall asleep to the thought of his warmth and how he pinned my body—arms stretched, everything bared—on the stale, cold tile floor of my blankness. He kissed my neck down to my groin as if there was some sort of invisible track there that his lips followed. Memory that would always zoom into his hands, his arms, his neck, his mouth, his eyes, his face, his soft articulation of my name in between breaths while he slammed his body against mine. When his hands landed on my skin and caressed certain areas of my body, he had switched on a light inside of me. And so I thought, how could I not be attached to the memory of him? I let him pass borders and barriers.
Sometimes, I still feel his lips on my skin and so I set my hands to sail what his lips have braved only to feel the cracks and bruises that was left of the shipwreck. And now, I only have cigarettes to make up for the heat I could never get back.
As I replay the memory in my mind, all these metaphors and symbolisms start to rush in, and every time I recall it, it is of a different meaning but always the same occasion. I wanted so badly for the meanings to be different much more for what a stick of cigarette reminds me of. I guess the memory was too strong that it has etched itself on me with every kiss, every touch, every pull, push and bend that happened that night. It still lingers. The sensation, perhaps too strong to be diluted by a cigarette—I guess it doesn’t always serve its purpose to help you forget. Because in certain instances smoking, or even simply lighting a cigarette, could be the wick to invoke frail sentiments or summon thoughts that might disturb the once peaceful state of the mind.
Smoking cigarettes damages the way you breathe and scars your lungs but in a worst-case scenario, it might do harm or damage far more than just to the way we breathe. Cigarette packs should state this too, aside from images of persons who have been severed by cigarette-smoking. This might actually do more saving.
In the lightness or heaviness of each memory do we find ourselves lured even more into the remembrance it gives and how we ache to sometimes remove the burden of its permanence. There will be a price for hearing one’s heart. But the the price is even higher for those who remember first.
With the findings and results imparted from this study, the researcher wishes to relay that: firstly, smoking, although undoubtedly pleasurable and helpful during times of great stress or even just to pass the time, bears with it a price—a much higher price—for giving this sense of satisfaction; and then secondly, smoking, in one way or another, damages us sometimes in ways the sciences can no longer detect; and lastly, smoking, for whatever reason one has for doing it, must be done responsibly.
