The Addiction

I frequent a website featuring street fashion photography, popular among the fashion world.  It occurred to me today how frequently I have seen a photograph of a person with a cigarette carelessly between two fingers, as if an accessory -- much like a belt, a hat.  This person is usually European, drop dead gorgeous, may be older but is often times younger.  This person is cool.  Confident.  Stylish.  Self-aware.  Or is he?

I have not been affected by a glamorous image of cigarette smokers.  There is an image that reached me much sooner, and it came to me in my youth.  This is an image of a person very, very dear to me, who has been addicted to nicotine ever since I can remember.  An addiction of heavy smoking that stains teeth, fingernails, and fingerprints a shade of yellow.  The lungs, a former pink, are aged black.  An addiction that comes with a cough that is chronic, has texture and layers, and is never just a single cough.  It is a coughing fit.  It is the body simultaneously needing and rejecting the nicotine. 

Ironically, I have suffered from asthma from a very young age.  I've not had the luxury of experimentation, of casual smoking.  When I was five years old, I spent time in a hospital tent so that I could breathe fresh oxygen, free from pollutants.  I remember using my Etch-A-Sketch but forbidden to shake it, because the physical activity was just enough to make me lose my breath.  My older cousin Donna sat with me and shook the Etch-A-Sketch to reset it.  About five years later, I went to the shore with my father and my brother.  We’d forgotten to pack an inhaler or any asthma medication, and I had an asthma attack.  I can still remember my father’s anger and fear as we waited for a prescription so that he could go to a pharmacy and get my medication.  I played basketball in middle school but it didn’t last.  I loved the sport but I couldn’t handle the running.  I played soccer in high school, it was my favorite sport.  I quit because I couldn’t run.  To this day, the following induce breathing problems: animals, dust, exercise, perfume, pollen, smoke.  I practice yoga and have become quite good at it.  My weaknesses gave way to my strengths. 

I am deeply saddened, however, that I must watch my father slowly kill himself with cigarettes.

If you are reading this, and you are a smoker, do me and yourself a favor.

Please quit.

Image: The Sartorialist