Everyone knows that cigarettes will kill you after an extended period of smoking. I have grown up with two of my most important women in my life smoking. My mother and her sister, Carol, both have smoked for the majority of their lives. I have witnessed both of them trying multiple ways to quit and have always went back to these awful cancer sticks. Their addiction breaks my heart.

I am lucky that my mother has not run into any cancer or issues yet, but my aunt has. Recently, my aunt has been diagnosed with stage four COPD. I never realized that she was so sick. After everyone in my family grieving the death of her husband, it seemed that she got worse. During his sickness, she tried to quit "cold turkey" because her husband was not happy about her habit. Sadly, that did not work.

I am so angry. I am not mad at my aunt. I am not mad that she has an addiction, many people do. I am mad that this addiction is slowly taking her away from us on earth. I cannot begin to express how I feel about cigarettes. I do not like the smell, the idea, or how much people pay for them all of the time. I fully understand an addiction cycle, I am a health major in college and we have studied it. In fact, I have taken a whole course on Substance Abuse. There are many emotions that you deal with when someone you love is dying due to an addiction to cigarettes.

At first, you get mad at the person. This typically happens first because you will think to yourself, "Why can't they just quit?" Until you take time to sit down and study more about addiction, you won't realized truly how hard it is for the human brain to let go of that. You will probably try to talk to the person you love and tell them all of the things wrong with smoking. Chances are that they already know what the long term effects are, but there isn't much that they can do to stop the addiction. There are hundreds of quit smoking programs and patches and pills. The problem is, is that those may work for a little while, but if they have just one bad day and one weak moment, they may smoke again. Addiction can be a never ending cycle. This doesn't mean that some people don't ever quit the habit, it is just less likely that if they do quit, it may not last.

Next, you never think that those effects could happen to them. It is well known that COPD, lung cancer, and so much more can come from long term smoking. These diseases can come at any time during their life after smoking and can potentially end their life.

Hearing my aunt and mother cough all of the time kills my heart. I know that this is an addiction, and they chose to smoke, but that does not make this hurt any less. I cannot imagine my life without Carol's beautiful face and contagious laugh. I could talk and laugh with her every day. She is my shoulder to lean on when I get weak and right now I wish she were well. I want her to live the happiest life that she can and be disease free. I pray every night that God takes this from her and heals her. I want a miracle for her. I want you to know that if you smoke, someone that you love is wishing that you wouldn't. Smoking is one of the most preventable death causes in the world. Please don't end your life from something that you can prevent.

I love you Mom, and Carol too. Please never forget that.