A moment when I changed your mind

I always thought smoking wasn’t a big deal. Sure people told me it was bad for me and I believed them, but I never though it was bad enough that I needed to quit.

“Smoking will kill you, Evan,” my friends would say.

I would reply with something like, “I didn’t realize you were going to live for ever,” or “Something’s gotta kill you.”

I smoked for nearly a decade. In that time period I heard about every reason why I should quit:

“It will give you cancer.” “It makes you smell bad.” “It will give you a heart attack.” “It makes your teeth yellow.” “It makes you look uneducated.” I was even told it decreases circulation and thus, makes your penis smaller.

Still, I didn’t listen or care. I felt fine. “I’ll quit later in life,” I’d said.

That changed about a month ago.

My girlfriend began to have lung and breathing problems. She had a terrible cough and became so lightheaded one day she took a nasty spill down half a flight of stairs. She is now doing better with the help of two inhalers and a weekly breathing treatment at campus health.

Now, we’ve only been dating for half a year and I rarely smoked around her, so her health problems weren’t caused by me (though I’m sure my smoking didn’t help), but suddenly my perspective on smoking changed. I saw how someone I loved very much had been negatively affected by smoking. I learned her lungs had been damaged because of her father, who smoked all through her childhood. I decided I didn’t want to be like her father. I became motivated to quit.

It’s likely one day I’ll have children myself. It’s one thing for me to do what I want to my own body, but it’s another to hurt people around me. Suddenly it became very clear and very simple: I needed to quit smoking and I needed to quit smoking now.

So I did.

It was foolish to start smoking in the first place but it took my love of my girlfriend for me to see that.

I’m proud to say I’ve been smoke free for almost a month and I’m proud of myself for being able to change my mind about something very very important for both the health of myself and my loved ones.