Tired

I don't think Tony comprehends exactly how much smoking bothers me. I said something this morning and he took it as a dig at his mom, but it wasn't about her. I am just sick to death (no pun there at all) of smoking. I can't stand that my mom is smoking again. I don't understand it. Smoking is one of the stupidest things a person can do. Maybe the stupidest thing. And, if you're a smoker reading this -- yes, I do mean you. You can act as offended as you want to, and I'm sure you will. That's the thing with doing something that you know is stupid -- and you have to know, what with even the cigarette companies doing PSA's -- he who doth protest too much, as Shakespeare would say...

Smoking is what brought my sisters and me into this world as premature, sickly babies. It's what kept me sick as child and prone to bronchitis later in life. It's the thing that brought a hospital bed into our living room when I was a teenager and the thing that killed my father -- as painfully as possible -- when he was just 54. The smell of it, to me, is the smell of death. Every time I breathe it in, I feel like a part of me is dying.

Smoking will kill you. And it won't be a nice easy quick death. And it isn't just you that it hurts. That's the part that pisses me off the most -- smoking hurts everyone around you. Smokers always want to just make it all about them. But it isn't. It hurts all of us. Not just the people that breathe in the secondhand smoke, but anyone you know that cares about you. You think we like watching you die, cranked up on morphine to take away the pain, your tobacco-stained fingers scrabbling across the hospital sheets as you search for one last nicotine fix when you can barely even breathe and can't even hold the cigarette to your mouth by yourself?

If I offend you, fine. Maybe you'll think about it. If you're like any of the smokers I know personally, you won't. Instead you'll just get all pissed off and holier-than-thou. You probably didn't even read this far. Whatever. You know what, it's your funeral and not mine. And I do mean that literally.

Yeah, me. The girl with no father to walk her down the aisle. The one who someday will be doing another bedside vigil at the side of her mother or mother-in-law, people who are already unhealthy and wonder why. The ones that are already dying inside.

Sorry to anyone who stumbled by looking for a little bon mot about writing or whatnot. This is the "venting" part of my blog. This is stuff that's been stewing inside of me for years and lately it's been very near the surface as the mother-in-law has been chainsmoking since she's been here. Our front porch smells like an ashtray. Our third floor, like stale tobacco. Every day, a reminder.

I'm just tired.