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Editor’s Box By Sarah Abercrombie [email protected] Assistant Editor |
The one thing I would never want
As a child growing up in a house with two smokers, I never thought I would put a cigarette in my mouth.
Throughout my childhood and early teen years I hated the smell of cigarettes. I remember when I was in elementary school I hated that my mother smoked.The summer before my junior year I smoked for the first time. It was so nasty. I just didn’t see how anyone would ever want to smoke. But that really didn’t stop me from smoking from time to time. I guess you could say I was a “social smoker.”
The strange thing is that now I smoke at times, but I hate it. I can feel my lungs—it’s like they become heavy and it’s harder to breathe.Cigarettes are everywhere. It’s like you can’t escape them or the thought of them. I think the hardest thing is seeing people I care about smoke. My boyfriend smokes. His left hand smells like he washed his hand in an ashtray. As of now, I have given up the battle with my mom. Now I just try when I am around her to not start stuff. You know, be nice.
The reason why I hate cigarettes so much is that I would never want to see anyone die of lung cancer.For the past year I have lived with my aunt. Her husband died of lung cancer last year. A few weeks before he died my mom and I stopped by to show my aunt and my cousin what we had bought from Lenox Square. My mom went into the den to see my uncle, but I couldn’t go in.
I have never been good with dealing with death or sickness. I can’t imagine what my aunt went through during that time my uncle was sick, but I KNOW I don’t ever want to have to go through it!! And no, I’m not saying that smoking is absolutely the cause of lung cancer, but why up the ante?As I sit here at my computer crying my eyes out, all I can think about is my mom.She is so wonderful, and I know that sometimes I can be a witch. But I don’t know what I would do if she had cancer. I don’t know how I would handle her being sick like that. The hardest thing is that I would lose the one person I could tell everything to. My best friend.