Sometimes, life does this funny thing where it completely knocks you on your butt. We've all been there at some point. If you haven't, you probably will eventually (good luck). At the end of last semester, I had a relationship end, I was cut from my Division I sports team, and I failed an exam for the first time in my entire life. Ouch. It wasn't pretty. I basically spent the entire last month of school feeling like this:

And this:

And especially this:

But, like the heroine in any romantic comedy or feminist novel, I slowly rallied; the fires in that dog's kitchen ebbed, showers became significantly less depressing, and I no longer felt like I was dying. Now I kind of feel like:

I grew and learned a lot from my experience, and I wouldn't change those results for the world. Sometimes life is horribly unpleasant, but sometimes you just need a good slap in the face in order to reevaluate. Even though it may feel fatal, here are some reasons why a kick in the ass could be the first step to something much, much better.

You figure out who is important.
When you're going through a rough patch, you're easily able to differentiate between the friends who genuinely care and the friends who genuinely do not. A friend isn't actually a friend if they're only around for the fun times. You learn to let go of those people and hold onto the ones who are there to help and try to make you happy.

You figure out what is important.
If you get cut off from something you thought was important to you, you can finally take a step back and figure out whether or not you actually need that thing in your life. If you decide that you just can't live without it, you fight for it. If not, you finally have more room for the things you really care about.

You rediscover old friends and old passions.
Now that you have a huge, gaping hole in your life (congratulations!), you start to remember things that had been squeezed out by whatever created that hole in the first place. You randomly miss that friend that drifted all last semester. Call them. Suddenly you realize that you love to dance but haven't taken a class in forever. It's time to put on your boogie shoes and get back out there.

You're more willing to try new things.
Not only do you rekindle old passions in order to restart your life, but you are also open to trying new things. You're ready to become more adventurous because, honestly, you have nothing left to lose. Then you find something that makes you question what you ever did without it. I recommend watching new television show ... or scuba diving. It depends on how adventurous you feel.

You feel a new drive to succeed.
There's nothing like failure that makes you want to bounce back and succeed. You deserve a win. Go out there, and earn it. After I failed my first ever exam (in organic chemistry, in case you were wondering), I put all of my energy into studying for the final and miraculously pulled out an A. The failure actually drove me to a better grade than I would have gotten because I felt like I had something to prove.

You know what you need in order to be happy.
Since you know what it takes to make you feel miserable, you now also know what it takes to make you feel happy. You have a newfound knowledge of who you are and what's important to you, and you can use that knowledge to pursue your happiness and dreams with more clarity (and therefore success) than you would have otherwise.

You can shape your life the way you want.
When life knocks you over, getting back up feels like a clean slate. You embrace it. You get to leave all of that negativity behind and build a life from scratch that you want. It's never too late to start over, especially if you feel like it's time to throw in the towel on what came before. It's like hitting the reset button on a video game; you may feel a little guilty, but it needed to happen because that life was going nowhere.

You realize how strong you are.
Some days, getting out of bed seems impossible. Then you get out of bed. Making it through class without crying or becoming violently ill seems unfeasible. Then you make it through class. You do things you never thought you'd be able to do. Your crumbling stronghold has rebuilt itself into a brick wall. And after enough time passes, and your old problems attempt to come back into your life, you're more equipped to handle them. I mean, you've done it before, and when it happened last time it was one of the best things that ever happened to you.

So whether or not you feel like you're struggling to get by or you're already on the mend, just remember that it's probably for the best in the long term even though it completely sucks in the moment. Also, feel like you're alone because Walt Disney understands your pain.

Another thing to remember: If Robert Downey Jr. can recover from the 1980s to become Iron Man, then you can do anything.