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I am an addict. My addiction is to tobacco. Not nicotine as much as the tobacco itself. Those vapor pens don't do it for me. They might ease the pains of the nicotine withdrawal but I find that it doesn't satisfy the taste. It's a horrible taste. Why would I want that? It's a strange thing. I believe my attachment has to do with the fact that I use them to sort of ground myself. This is absurd considering my knowledge that there are a whole lot of healthy ways one could do so. Maybe in my mind I have it as sharing in the suffering of the earth. Which I do suffer the earths pains. It happens in the visions that move through me. I don't know how to explain the kind of suffering that I experience. I am working to cleanse my spirit from past negative experiences. This is not an easy task. No, this is a diving deep within. And the funny thing about it is, I use my breath to do the cleanse. So why would I want to fog it all up again? Just after going through those visions.

As I lay down to do this breath-work meditation I am always amazed at it's movement of energy throughout my body. Yesterday as I breathed, my whole body started shaking from head to toe like uncontrollable shivers. I welcomed this experience as I could feel the light cleansing my spirit of the visions that were coming in. With this as the darker visions passed, wonderful things of childlike experience came into the scene. Even in my outside world as words spoken from the other room. “Do you remember carousels when you were a kid?” Yes. This was the kind of world we'd like to see.

One where there is magic and fairytale fun. Not all this homogenizing into some suit cut world of false profit and greed. No, can you imagine how fun it could be if we just brought joy to every scene?

Now of course, we know that there would be some suffering still. Because people get injured sometimes. What would a world be without injury? Scars. We all have them whether physical or emotional or spiritual. I have scars. Many of them. I've been trying to find the actual roots. It's just that roots are kinda similar to the top part of the tree. They branch out. So I keep digging down and around. Trying to cleanse each one and recognize how strong we became because we made it through the fight and we grew.

Now I know my addiction roots into childhood as I was a teenager when I made that choice to use tobacco. I used it, I believe, as a way to fit in. To be cool. Because at my younger years, in elementary school, I suffered shaming. We were poor. I was shy. They hurt my feelings, I would cry. We moved on to middle school. In a different town, I had a new chance. Here I started to make more friends but I still got bullied a few times. Once, a couple of girls followed me home and spit in my hair. I never did understand why. There was nothing I'd ever done or said to them to be mean. I think they did it to see if I'd stand up for myself. I don't think I did. I don't remember. Anyway, high school came. And one day we were hiding behind the library and somehow tobacco came into the scene. I don't recall whose idea it was. I just know, I did it. But I didn't inhale...

High school, I stood by the wall, with a cigarette in hand. I thought I was cool. With my hair teased up and my high heeled boots. I overheard some girls down the way saying something about me not inhaling and to watch. So in that moment I decided to prove them wrong. I inhaled and I didn't cough.

From then on, I was a smoker. Attached to them. My girlfriends and I used to call them gum. It was cheap. They were a buck ten. Doable for teenagers without jobs. If we had to, we would scrounge the floor in my friends messy bedroom for change when we ran out. Then we'd go to the store and pick up a new pack. I became a Marlboro light girl, with my jean jacket and a job riding a horse. Oh, I was cool.

So, okay, now we can see how I got attached to being cool, right? I suppose what I found, as I continued to be a smoker into adulthood, was that cigarettes are like an icebreaker to start talking to other people. Smokers find each other. Got a light? Any chance you could spare a cigarette? It's a huddle in the rain and there's only that one spot a person could smoke. I've had many interesting conversations with folks over a cigarette. But oh my, why? Why the attachment? I've had many a wonderful conversation with folks without a cigarette being the reason. And geez. Sometimes it's just embarrassing to be a smoker.

At this stage, I feel tobacco is a powerful substance and if I had known it's sacred medicine, perhaps I would not have misused it from such a young age. But I do not know if this is true either. As here I am, an adult, who had quit using tobacco for 8 years, who decided to dabble with them and slipped the slippery slope back in to her addiction. The stranger thing about this is that it was foreseen in visions.

So now, here, in this moment of writing this, I've written myself into wanting to indulge in tobacco. So I take the laptop outside so I can have one by my side. I am guilty. I know this is not healthy. But I'm allowing myself to do it anyway. Perhaps it's in anticipation of my final quitting. Tobacco spirit is very powerful.

My story gets weird.