All that’s left to do is rise
“Rock bottom means the lowest possible level, state, or point in a situation, market, or personal life from which things cannot realistically get any worse.”
What do you do when you hit rock bottom? When you feel like you cannot drown anymore? When there’s nothing left to lose?
Hitting rock bottom is perceived by many as some sort of failure in life which permanently defines them. Like there’s no way out, like that’s where it ends, like that’s who you are.
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But what if I tell you that I read somewhere that “They lied to you, there is no rock at rock bottom, there’s a trampoline. And from there, all you do is fucking rise.”
We have always seen rock bottom as an endless pit where there is no life and no joy, where you are limbless, half starving, half surviving. Climbing out of rock bottom feels like trying to scale the walls of an empty well, with no stairs, no footholds, and nothing to hold on to. What do you do then? How do you get out?
Perhaps you fill the well yourself. With your sweat, your tears, your exhaustion, and every ounce of effort you put into making it through another day. Drop by drop, you fill the very well that once seemed impossible to escape. And when the water finally rises high enough, you swim your way to the surface. Perhaps that’s what rising really looks like: turning everything that once weighed you down into something that carries you up.
Because here’s one truth: once you’ve reached the bottom, even gravity has run out of places to take you.
I think there is nothing particularly poetic about hitting rock bottom when you’re actually there. It hurts, it exhausts, it takes things away from you that you might never get back. There is no denying the fall, no pretending that the walls aren’t steep or that the climb isn’t exhausting. It is every bit as terrible as it sounds. But there is something rather definitive about reaching the bottom. The fall has ended. Whatever comes next, at least it isn’t another fall.
“No one ever promised that the bottom would be kind. Only that, eventually, there would be one.”
