Personal Account of Living with a Smoker

Picture this scenario: you’re relaxing in your room with some mellow music playing, the television is off and you’re just about halfway through an article that you’ve been working on for the past hour or so, something you’re pretty proud of. In my case, this is an everyday thing that usually gives me my own personal slice of heaven, though just about every day it’s interrupted by the stale stench of smoke filtering through the small opening at the bottom of my doorway. The window being open doesn’t help, since the entire household has already been invaded by that same stench on numerous occasions, in fact it’s engrained into some of the furniture.

What’s the stench you ask? It’s cigarette, one of the most repugnant scents ever created by mankind.

I’ve lived with smokers my entire life and I’ve developed such a devastating hatred for cigarettes that I can’t help but snarl when someone blows smoke in my direction. Never mind the litany of health risks that effect the smoker and myself, the non-smoker, it’s simply one of the most disgusting condoned habits in the world. Discolored teeth, bad breath and the horrendous stale scent that manages to find its way to every nook and cranny wherever it’s being smoked.

For two decades that is what I’ve had to put up with. Many times there’s been a complete disregard for my well being and I’ve grown sick of it on numerous occasions. I’ve lost count for the number of times I went behind my mother’s back before I was thirteen and stole her cigarettes with the sole purpose of throwing them the out window for her never to find again. There was even a time where I shoved an entire pack into a bowl and ground them up with a mallet.

Regardless of my juvenile antics I always found myself greeted with the putrid smoke at one time or another and the fact that I still deal with it today is among the greatest pet peeves I could ever conceive. Due in no small part to my experience with smokers in my household I realized I could never date or even be close to anyone who smoked around me. Though my asthma has since calmed down from my youth, the smell of smoke reminds me of it and to a certain degree it feels as if inhaling the smoke will cause it to act up again.

To go along with the smell of cigarettes, there’s the leftover. Anyone who lives or has lived with a smoker has probably walked around their home and saw ash filled ashtrays. Though they’re serving their purpose, no one wants to see ashtrays all over the house with cigarette butts or ashes filling them up. Even further I’ve noticed cigarette ashes lying around on the floor in several places, plus, there are the burnt holes in certain table cloths and ironing boards.

Luckily, experience has brought me to check with all of my knowledge in order to prevent any type of fire, but it still doesn’t change the fact that living with a smoker is one of the most irritating of life’s tests.