I wish I could say that I ever tried to hide my smoking from my children, but the reality is that I couldn’t, because I was around them all the time and I also smoked all the time. When I switched to vaping after about a year into my midlife relapse with Camel Lights, I thought I’d be able to be subtle about my habit — maybe they wouldn’t even notice! But my 8-year-old still gives me a hard time about it every time he sees a Juul cupped in my palm. He’s right to be affronted, of course: Using nicotine is unequivocally very bad for you. It’s also, unfortunately, what gets me through my days. Those days start at 6:30, include a full-time job bracketed by child care, and don’t end till the kids finally pass out around 9, at which point my husband and I watch an episode of Better Call Saul, then try to be in bed by 10 so we can face the next day’s challenges. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is reach for my Juul, like Gollum cradling his precious. I live in fear of running out of a charge or cartridges.
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