Tales From Rock Bottom
When I was 12 years old, the term rock bottom referred to my favorite wrestler’s finishing move. That was the only definition I was familiar with. Shortly thereafter, I would slowly but surely begin to work my way towards my very own personal rock bottom. I wish I could tell you it was all bad but it wasn’t. Had it been all bad, I would have found my bottom sooner. Part of me wishes I did and then the other part knows everything happened exactly how it was supposed to. So far from how I had planned it and for that I’m grateful.
I was headed for rock bottom before I knew it. So many of my words, actions and thoughts began to pave the road, well before I had ever stepped foot on it. It went from fun, to just something I did to something I didn’t know how to stop doing and all I knew, before I even knew what hit me. I ignored so many signs, I took literal instances of divine intervention for granted. The only reason I didn’t blame God for all of the bad in my life back then is because I didn’t have a God to blame. I didn’t blame him, I didn’t thank him, he didn’t exist.
The thing about rock bottom is it looks different to each of us. And our definition of it can change many times over again. In other words, regardless of how bad you think it is now, it could be worse. For me it seemed to just keep getting worse and in retrospect it was — because I always found a way to make things worse. With zero accountability about me. For me, the first time I truly felt like I had hit bottom and bounced off it, I unfortunately still had so much further to fall. To lose the job I was lucky to have even acquired in the first place, be asked to leave the home I had helped build by the girl I loved wasn’t low enough. I dug deeper, as we so often do. I never learned how to let sleeping dogs lie.
People I loved just kept dying. Every funeral ended with a trip to the bar we pretended was about the person who had just passed but never was or is. It’s just a way of burying pain and turning hurt into a hangover. To be honest, I just got tired of going to funerals and waking up in the hospital uninsured. I got tired of losing. I forgot what winning even looked like. The thing about rock bottom is we as individuals get to declare when enough is enough. When to stop digging ourselves in further and further and finally start climbing upward. I made a decision to stop digging and start climbing and haven’t looked back. The climb is not always enjoyable, you get tired sometimes. The important thing is to remember is to just keep climbing.
