"smoke"

i was thinking the other day about my childhood.
what it felt like to be a kid.
then i thought about how old I was.
28 doesn't seem the age i feel every morning I wake up.
how did I get to 28? and why don't i feel it?
Im still the 4 year old girl who jumps waves at the beach.
who sits on her Grandpa's shoulders, and eats lunch in the camper at the beach.
the girl who rides her beach cruiser down the middle of the street with no hands.

where did i come from?
because where Im at now doesn't reflect the childhood I had.
doesn't reflect the people that were there.
as much as I want to remember and identify with something or a family I knew growing up .
I can't.
Its faded.
Like smoke. thick, in your face, choking you up, making me cough, burning my eyes and then it slowly fades away. my syptoms fade, and the air is clear again, but the smoke is still in my clothes.
if you've been around smoke all your life you know it's hard to wash the smoke out of your clothes. It takes time. and time. and time....and time again to get the smell out.. and even then.... its never completely out of the fibers.

Eventually you just learn the smell.

you cant smell it anymore.

its apart of you.


You think you've washed it way but its there..... and you don't know its there until your around someone who doesn't smoke and they ask you "whats that smell?"

someone brings it to your attention that your different. and then you realize its the smoke. the smoke you thought was gone.
you know smoke isn't good for you but you live with it because its who you are, its all you know. or at least you think the smoke is who you are.
Eventually you start smoking too.
but then you find out that smoke kills. second hand smoke kills. smoke is a form of poison. you stop smoking. no more smoke. but smoke lingers.
and you wake up one morning and realize "im still breathing in the smoke"

back when I was a kid it was okay to smoke around me.the adults back then, in my life, didn't think twice about lighting up. no one really knew the harmful effects it could have.

that it would have.

but now I know.
I know that smoke sneaks up on you, and wraps itself around you when you're not even looking. It travels. It affects other people you love and care for. It has no mercy. it always invites you back with the same poison it got you with the first time, and it never has anything better to offer.
I'm glad I kicked the habit. because I don't live my life in a thick smokey cloud of haze anymore.