The Lotus Flower

The last couple of days have been really depressing. I keep taking the drugs and waiting for the breakthrough but nothing seems to change. I even had additional problems starting Saturday with the strange feeling that someone had punched me very hard in my left thigh, from there down the whole leg tingles and started to drive me so mad in the night that I drew blood scratching it. Not that I’d have had much sleep anyway since someone had a party till 5am (amazing how someone can party for that long and still not play a single decent record). Since it was quite a warm evening I’d had the bedroom window open and around 2am it was a clear choice between sleeping and breathing.

On Sunday my mood plummeted like a stone:  I need to tell you something about a little drug called pre-gablin. I went to my pain clinic for the first time around three years ago and they told me about a drug that would get rid of the nerve pain I was experiencing, especially in my lower back and down the back of my leg. I was started on a low dose and I was so grateful for the relief I had been given. Along with a cocktail I was already taking and a new drug called phenytoin that would also settle things down. He actually told me not to read about the side effects and that should have warned me enough; of course I did read it and frightened myself to death. The pre-gablin was overshadowed by the phenytoin to such an extent that I didn’t even think about the side-effects until I missed a dose.

I started the afternoon with a sort of general irritability; nothing was right and it was like I had been given the exact opposite of rose coloured spectacles. By late afternoon I wanted to cry at anything and everything. I felt completely irrational and it was around this point that I started to realise something was wrong. We all get weepy or irrational moods sometimes so I was doing my calculations first to see if it was a natural mood fluctuation, but it wasn’t. I went to bed baffled feeling like there was nothing good in my life at all. I really worried when I had an almost sleepless night and woke up feeling the same way. After breakfast I went to my tablets and opened up the box. I have one of those lovely OAP boxes for counting out your daily meds into breakfast, lunch, tea and bed. I then realised I had missed some from the day before and that all of my pre-gablin had been missed for 24 hours. I knew then that I’d be two or three days recovering before my mood was back to normal. Pre-gablin works as a painkiller but is also a drug for Generalised Anxiety Disorder and if a dose is missed the level of anxiety can rise. Even taking the medication can increase aggression, irritation, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts but missing a dose can increase these symptoms too. I couldn’t double up on doses because that isn’t safe so I knew I would have to simply wait, taking my normal doses and waiting for the level to balance out. I wasn’t feeling suicidal thank God, but just had a general unease like something wasn’t right, but `I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was unhappy about my hair (a recent colour had gone wrong), I was unhappy about college and how my illness was impacting on my life and my work. I couldn’t focus on anything and could manage little more than watching box sets all day or crap TV all day, or playing games on Facebook.

During this time I received a present from my writing group. It was a journal called ‘The Flowering Lotus Journal’ and it was beautiful, full of little sayings I like to use from many different writers and lots of recovery wisdom with space to record my own journey. My journal depicted a red lotus flower with green leaves in a dark pond and was so similar to shot I’d taken of a white water lily that I am using for my business cards and flyers. For me the white lily image seemed to represent quietness, peace of mind and meditative thinking. It seemed just right for a business where I use my own experiences to teach others how to recover.

I looked into the meaning of the lotus flower and found that in Egyptian culture, and the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism it was a symbol of rebirth; the image of the perfect beautiful flower emerging from the murky darkness of a pond is clearly a symbol of purity coming from the darkness. The Egyptians saw it as a flower linked to the Sun and reincarnation because it emerged from the dark water and seemed to bloom afresh every day. In Hinduism the white lotus flower represents purity and spiritual enlightenment in a person, who carries out their tasks for others with no need for reward or recognition from others. In addition a folded flower was seen as an unfolded person with the potential for spiritual enlightenment and growth. All of these were very uplifting ideas and fit neatly with where I felt I was – in the dark murky waters waiting to open. In Buddhism, the flower’s ability to emerge cleanly every morning from the dirty water is a sign of purity as well as rebirth, but also a desire for change and spiritual enlightenment. I was desperately in need of change here and feeling at rock bottom. The Buddhist religion saw different qualities in the different colours of the flower. The red lotus on my journal is associated with the heart and the qualities of love and compassion in a person. So it seemed the two images – the white flower I had worked on for my cards and the red flower given to me by my group – were showing the conflict I was having between all the things I wanted to get out there and do and the need to show love and compassion. While the white flower was suggesting enough spiritual enlightenment to do for others without reward, the red flower was reminding me of the need for balance. To show the love and compassion I have shown to others to myself for a little while. So, I did what I always tell my group to do when they are lost in their recovery journey. Go back to basics and look at the list of things I need to recover. The first question I tell them to ask themselves is ‘what is the next best thing to do for my recovery?’ and this is the question I asked myself.

Now it seemed that I was the student and my students were the teachers. I was having my own words sent back to me and it was interesting looking into the mirror. I am in a constant relapse and recovery cycle which made me perfect for teaching and counselling, but this time I felt I had to sit back and take notice. I had received so many cards saying ‘take care of yourself’ and while I’d read the words I hadn’t fully understood them. The journal seemed to be poking at me and saying ‘practice what you preach’. So, as soon as my medicine levels were back to normal, I opened the new journal and started to write from the beginning.