The Lotus Blooms From Mud

This is a story that grows from the darkest days of my life. These days smell of putrid swamp, sound like buzzing flies, appears to be purgatory on the Styx, and I burned incense incessantly, covering the smell of rotting trash. Looking retrospectively, I know these days were not all dark, and now see bright sparks of light that allowed me to persevere to finally learn gratitude and the manifestation of abundance. These dark days lived between 2015 and 2018.

It is a human condition to have contemplated the edge of life at least once. To stand on the side of a cliff and think “what if I jumped?” Is there something holding you back? Some people spend more time on this cliff than others, whether in their mind or reality.

I was blessed to meet an angel as I stood on this cliff, she appeared in the form of fairy-like human. Let’s call her Eie. Our bond was instantaneous. It became as though we were joined at the hip. I moved out of a toxic living situation and into an apartment with her. My hair was pink and her hair was turquoise. We made up for the darkness by being as brilliant as we could. We smoked, danced, talked in riddles, colored our bodies using needles and colorful inks. For several months we evaded the demons grabbing at our tails.

This bemusing bliss could not last forever. The truth always surfaces, delay can only live so long. Within a year, both of us lost control of our light. Eie would sneak off to a coke den for the night, and I would waste away in the bathtub, afraid to leave for my hallucinations were getting louder every day. Our lives diverged. We would argue about little things the other had done, misconstruing everything to fit our independent melodramatic inner dialogues, or we would not talk at all, passing by each other in the house with a cool breeze of indifference. Beneath this layer of horrid conceit, we both knew we still have love for each other embedded deep in our souls. To retain our connection, on a rare night out together, we stamped each other’s hands with cigarette butts and blistered each other’s skin for a lasting scar of memory.

Six months passed without us talking. During this time I have been like a hermit, living on a small farm and looking within to stabilize my mental health. After I take off my garden gloves I catch glimpses of my hand, and the cigarette burn reminds me of my pain and losses. I take out my needles and ink, remembering a Hindu poem with the line “the lotus blooms from mud.” I think of this paradoxical truth when I poke the flower around the burn, cradling it in the center petal. This little tattoo gives me a constant reminder, that something so beautiful can come from something so dark, a reason to keep living through the depths of hell.

Within a day of transforming the meaning of that place on my skin, Eie calls me, as though she knew what I had done. I can tell she is manic, incredible delusions spur from her lips and I try to decode her convoluted language. She’s moved back from NYC to LA. I’m in the bay area, a bus ride away. I’ve been working on growing a healthy psyche, but I am ecstatic at our contact despite imbalances of chaotic energies.

More than a year has passed since this interaction. I visited Eie at her rehab center. The bus ride back to the bay stank of toilet sewers and I kept my nose buried in a swatch of fabric scented with lavender oil. Eie is more than a year sober now and is doing great. I left the abusive relationship I had entered after we stopped talking. Now I have a healthy partnership, my own apartment, and am going back to school with plans to join the health care industry and help other people get through their own metaphysical problems. I am getting a tattoo gun soon to continue drawing inspiring symbols on skin to help us reclaim our bodies and appreciate the abundant bounty earth and life have to offer.