Four Quarters.

I've been thinking about a cigarette. Not an entire one. Just a few drags. A quarter of its whole.

When I first moved into the Loft I would go out to the deck late at night and smoke a quarter of a cigarette. Often early in the morning I would smoke another quarter.

Eventually the quarter turned into a half and it started to become something I looked forward to. At some point I had to stop, which only smoking one to two cigarettes a day was incredibly challenging.

I remember one night a friend of mine joined me outside. It was 2am. The snow started falling. We blew the smoke into the cold air as our hats were being covered in little flakes. I remember him saying he was the happiest he had been, right there, in that moment. I didn't want it to end.

There were more moments like that. The morning after I was asked out on a date for the first time. I was crazy excited and I went outside to have my quarter cigarette and I felt butterflies of my becoming. My longing for love.

It was never about the cigarette. They were this thing I started doing before I had the courage to leave my marriage. Almost like this weird way of attaching to freedom and doing something 'bad' so that I could prove to myself I wouldn't blow up the world if I didn't follow the rules, if I acted in a way I wasn't supposed to.

The cigarette was my way of easing into this new life that I didn't think I deserved. The cigarette was the transition into the fear of what was next. The cigarette was that tiny head rush sitting on the porch, knowing that the courage was gathering and it was going to happen.

The cigarette, it was part of my magic.

I also started running.

I was barely eating and my body was slimming down fast.

That transition was not all kale and bee pollen.

It was the quarter cigarette as I gathered my strength to step into my next iteration.

Today as the sun was shining outside I thought about the cigarette, as I've been thinking about it for the last few days.

The culmination of the last thing I was manifesting has come to be. Last year during Magic Making Circle I was manifesting Dave and I buying a house together. A home where we could raise our kids, where we could have space, where our next chapter together would come to be.

I tell the women who circle each year in that circle that we do the work in our 6 months together but then it is in the seventh, the eighth, the ninth month that you better get ready for the magic to sink in. For the Universe and you to start lining up to the vibrations you were calling forth.

And boom. I'll get the emails, the messages.

They are like me, kind of like, "Holy Shit, this really happened."

That is usually when I want the cigarette. As we now have manifested the home. The place of my next iteration.

I went for a run. I took my vitamins and drank my greens. I had cashew yogurt with paleo granola. 

I felt angry. Unsettled. If I could just have that quarter of that whole cigarette this would all feel better.

Because what often doesn't get talked about is that once your dreams realize, there you are. 

Like being naked in your life. Raw. Real. It is usually when the work happens. 

The emotions will pour into each box I will pack and wrap in tape and label for the rooms of this life that I actively chose to manifest.

This last circle of the magic was all about manifesting home, safety in love.

I don't need the cigarette, as much as I think about it. I don't need to risk the addiction to something that will hurt my body.

I can't have it now because it wouldn't fit into who I am now, who I love now, who I chose to be as mama and lover and friend.

But then. Back then. It was a lifeline into my future self. She would sit on the porch after they went to school, after she ran. She would pour her coffee and smoke her quarter cigarette as she meditated all the feelings from her past keeping her trapped.

And then. On that deck, in the snow with him, in the sunshine waiting for her becoming, then she needed it.

She had so much to say good-bye to. And that cigarette saved her, held her, protected her.

In the first days of our love I would try to hide the taste and smell from my kisses to him. He always knew.

He patiently waited for me to be ready. 

To be ready to say good-bye to that quarter of a whole. To no longer need that to feel safe.

He wanted to be my safety. I fought it, pushed. 

And now, today, when I'm thinking about the cigarette, and I'm so freaking crabby, I go outside and sit on his lap in the sun. I kiss him. I'm terrified. And I am safe.

There is part of me that is terrified with what I drew forth. Which is the story within all the dreams I call forth into my now.

I really didn't want to tell any of you about the cigarette. Which typically means it is exactly what words need to be written.

Dreaming is messy. Manifesting is exhausting and triggering and so damn hard because it is asking you to make peace with parts of your past so that you can release the she who was. It asks you to trust. It asks you to believe. It asks you to get more vulnerable than you want to. It asks you to look beyond all you think you are worth into the magic that is you.

And it works. And it is the most real thing I know.

The quarter of the whole is only in my memories now, dancing into my longings that want me to remember how to ease the fear. 

But there he is. The one I manifested from the magic. And there is our home. And there are the someday dreams that will come after the integration of this life I grew from the seeds of the work.

Magic is the whole of all the quarters of our dreaming and feeling and desiring.

I've been thinking about a cigarette and I trust myself to no longer need the quarter of the whole.