Oh, man does it hurt when you slam into life’s rock bottom. You feel like you’re trying to climb out of a pit, but there’s nothing to grab onto. People want to help, but they don’t know how…and you don’t even know what you need. You’re stuck. You put your head in your hands, and the tears just roll on out. The worst part is knowing that there were probably caution signs, but you didn’t notice because you were too busy doing what you thought was the right thing.
Turns out you missed your turn and even your GPS doesn’t know where the heck you are. You keep going, though. Even when there’s nowhere to go because you’re in this awful pit, you keep moving because that’s the only way you’ll find a way out–even if there isn’t one. You tell yourself that it will be okay, and give yourself a superficial hug. You don’t believe yourself, of course, but you tell yourself anyway. While you were pacing and thinking and worrying, you didn’t realize how far you had gone. You didn’t notice what a difference all your efforts had made. When it finally sinks in that you’re no longer at rock bottom, it’s almost like it never happened.
You vow you’ll never forget though, because forgetting is dangerous. Forgetting means we didn’t internalize the lesson, that we didn’t understand how we hit rock bottom. Forgetting means we’ll get stuck again…and the second time will be so much harder to pull ourselves up. But we will. It’s what we do. We pull ourselves up and start anew daily, every sunrise, every breath, every heartbeat. We start anew. Always.
The Writing Den 