If you love me

If you love me, if I love you...stop smoking.

Just stop.

I know it's your right to do so. I know you enjoy it. I know you think a cigar or cigarette or whatever won't hurt you. Or that you'll proudly take the risk, because you are free. But listen. Listen to me. LISTEN.

It's breaking my heart to watch my friends drag oxygen bottles around and to listen to you--you who once sang in choirs and shouted at football games--to listen to you struggle to draw a breath as emphysema and COPD steal the light from your life. I have watched too many friends die by cancer or heart disease. I have stood by too many coffins.

Don't leave me. Stay. Let's decide right now to stay here as long as we can. Let's live long enough to be a burden on society.

So stop. Stop now. Use enough patches to make yourself look like a quilted doll, sign up for every stop smoking program, use electroshock if you have to, I don't care what you have to do. Just stop.

And if I don't love you, do what you want. It's your life. But I bet you, too, have someone who loves you and you're going to break their heart.