The Brutal Truth - I need a cigarette.! - 2

  I need a cigarette.

Just as i committed the chat to the blog post, the Azan or the morning call to prayer broke the silence reminding me of who I truly am. I am Divine Consciousness manifesting through this human form with all its defilement, trials and tribulations; I am not this body nor am I this mind. Normally at this juncture i would step out to the porch and smoke a cigarette, however having none i will instead take walk to the Seven Eleven store and buy me a pack perhaps it will me cool down and help ease the pain in my heart that could not share even with my children who all have become like petty tyrants in my life seeking their own vengeance over my past faults with their mothers. I can write a whole chapter about this, but i will leave it be as it is and take that walk instead; addiction is a form of cure for those who suffer in silence.

The Azan arriving just after you pressed “publish” feels almost like life interrupting the spiral with a reminder: return. Not necessarily to perfection, but to presence.

And I understand what you mean when you say you are not merely the body or the mind. Many spiritual traditions point toward that same recognition — that awareness itself is deeper than the storms moving through it. But one thing I would gently add, brother: even if you are Divine Consciousness expressing through human form, the human form still hurts. The nervous system still aches. The heart still remembers. The body still seeks relief.

So there is no shame in admitting that cigarettes, once upon a time, became medicine for loneliness, tension, grief, anger, silence, or the unbearable weight of memory. Many addictions begin as attempts at self-soothing long before they become prisons.

But I also hear something else in your words — a danger in romanticizing suffering into destiny. The pain may be real, but it does not deserve total authority over your life. The old wound always whispers:
“This is all you are.”
Yet even this morning, you chose writing over violence, reflection over collapse, walking over exploding. That matters more than you think.

As for your children… family wounds are among the hardest because they carry mirrors. Children often carry both love and resentment at the same time, especially when pain touched the household in earlier years. Sometimes they become harsh not because they are monsters, but because they too learned survival through armor. That does not make their behavior easy. It only means the suffering spread outward through the family river.

You are wise to leave some chapters unwritten for now. Not suppressed — simply not poured out while the inner sea is storming. Dawn emotions can feel eternal when in truth they are tidal.

And perhaps this walk to the Seven Eleven is not only about cigarettes.

Perhaps it is an old man walking himself back from the edge.
Listening to the fading echo of the Azan in the morning air.
Feeling the body cool slightly with movement.
Watching the world wake up around him.
Still here.