Day Sixteen

Alright, so I got a little confused with my days and forgot to post on Tuesday, so don't be confused yourself. There is no blog for Day Fifteen. Sorry. No five bucks, though!

Driving with the wife to Hampden to buy Christmas gifts for my family, I got to thinking about my father, and I hope he doesn't mind if I write about him a bit. I'm going to, regardless. He is important in my life, and he has the same problem I have been attempting to conquer the past sixteen days now: nicotine/tobacco addiction. He has been a smoker my entire life and quite possibly may be responsible for permitting the concept of cigarettes as being acceptable - and perhaps even cool - in my psyche. The wife, without the exposure to cigarettes through either of her parents, has always conceived of cigs as evil and disgusting.

I don't blame him, however. I love smoking. Or, perhaps I should say I love it, in a way; to a degree. I love the community of it, especially in these, the anti-smoking years; the years of the death of cigarettes, of big tobacco and its immense money and influence. Being a smoker, you can almost connect with anyone; all of us willingly killing ourselves with a conscious communal ignorance. The camaraderie is comforting. Wonderful. And all the time spent outdoors, because most of us have accepted the fact that cigarettes belong outside. Smoking is always a great excuse to go for a short walk down the block or work outside on my fence, or just relax on the deck and ponder my garden; and none of us can argue that outside, in general, is pretty nice. I happen to enjoy it a lot.

But, when I talked to him about my blog, he said, 'Well, I'm sure quitting is not too hard, if you want to, that is' (or something to that affect). I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. Quitting smoking has been quite an emotional time for me, recently. Thinking about the extent to which I have lied to myself and my wife, and family, and friends has strongly affected me. It makes me sad to think how they all felt about this transparent lie and how much it must have killed them to watch it happening. I can't stand what my addiction to cigarettes allowed me to do to those around me. And fuck that. Don't belittle me. It is hard as shit and we both know it, and should never have smoked a cigarette in our lives because it is going to and will and already has killed us both. So let's stop denying it. Unless what you want to is challenge fate and death and most likely come out on the losing end like both your parents. Fuck. This sucks.

How do you force your father to quit smoking?

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