kinda emotional and ranty. read only if your patience is up and running.

So what do you do when you have to be the grown-up? I can tell you, it's terrifying when your parents start to need you the way you needed them all your life. Say there's no question that you'll step in, out of love, filial duty, to repay some of the generosity and kindness they've shown you all your life, because it's the 'right' thing to do... but I can vouch that its still scary as hell.

Now: what if it's 20-25 years premature? I'm 35, probably only 10-15 years away from a lot of you.

I'm furious at the duplicity of the tobacco companies. They knew how damaging it was, STILL is, much earlier than they ever told anyone, and they continued to sell products. They knew it was more addictive than heroin, they knew the damage it would do, but profit was more important to them is reprehensible. It's also a nice outlet for me to focus these bad feelings on. I try to know when I'm rationalizing.

If you smoke: quit. You think I have no idea how hard it is, you think I don't know your situation, you think I don't know how much of a hacked-off bitch you become when you try... I don't care. Try, and try again. I'm watching my mother, she who kissed knee scrapes, argued about boyfriends, took my 19-year-old pregnant butt in, die in horribly slow and painful inches.

She is a real person with hopes and dreams, just like you. She was a CFO of a small business and helped build it into a big business. A hospital stay ended her career. She could take on the nastiest salesman, tax man, teacher, or vendor and go toe to toe with them, and *they* would be the one to knuckle under. Ferociously protective of her family and friends, intensely loyal, almost fanatically honest, a brilliant accountant, she is now in the hospital because her smoking has reduced her lungs' ability to fight off infection and invaders so that bread mold has set up shop and started to grow. Let me say that again: she can't fight off *bread mold* thanks to smoking.

Please, if you smoke, picture yourself in my situation. Look at that person in the hospital bed, gasping, bedraggled, in pain, that person you love so much that it hurts sometimes. Watch them struggle to breathe, to tell you they love you, or even that they need to be carried to the bathroom. Now: know that this could have been prevented, and you would enjoy 20 years or more of their healthy presence.

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It hurts, you guys. It hurts a lot.

Please, for the sake of the people you love, and who love you: quit smoking NOW.