Have you ever heard the quote, "Rock bottom became the solid foundation upon which I rebuilt my life?" Maybe you have. It's a quote by none other than the famous J.K. Rowling. To me, that quote is the absolute epitome of truth.
People hear the words "rock bottom" and instantly think of being at the lowest of the lows. While that may be true, they also tend to think that there is no rising from rock bottom. That it's a permanent state of being, when it simply isn't. Rock bottom is ugly. It's horrifying and scary as hell. Maybe you haven't reached it yet, or maybe you never will. I have. Let me tell you all about it.
I was a kid when I developed an autoimmune disease. It wasn't until several years later when I was able to receive my diagnosis and treatment that helped. You see, my disease is sort of a weird one. Specifics don't really matter, but essentially, my immune system began to eat away at my brain. Chewing away at it, setting it ablaze with inflammation — and changing my life forever. Within a small period of time, it causes your normal life to be flipped completely upside down. And when I say a small period of time, I mean really small. Days.
After receiving treatment, I thought I was one-and-done. God, how naive, right? Because I am not a normal person and nothing normal ever happens to me, the same laws applied to my illness. Instead of growing out of it, I became shackled to it. Around a year and a half ago was the day I hit rock bottom. The day my disease relapsed.
Now, when I say that this disease sets your brain on fire, I mean it literally and figuratively. Figuratively, it's like setting a house on fire. Once the flames hit the studs, the house you knew and loved no longer exists. Only a shell is left. Now, can you see where I'm going with this?
Because my brain went up in flames, it was left with nothing but the frame. The build, but nothing inside. Rock bottom was the cold hard ground that I hit as soon as everything I knew had gone up in smoke. Not a single thought to be trusted. Days and nights of panicking to the point of vomiting and passing out. My brain no longer understood how to manage emotions and thoughts, just within the snap of your fingers. Things I once enjoyed became things that I couldn't even think about. A three-minute car ride across town for a coffee run became as anxious as an airplane ride. Everything I knew was destroyed. All of it, gone.
Hitting rock bottom was a lot like being thrown out of a moving car with no clothes on your back and no memory of who you are. Thus began the reason why it may have been the best possible thing to happen to me. It was a flat surface, finally. The lowest of all lows where the only other direction was up.
Overnight, I was given a new life. Not just a new one, but an empty one. A clean slate to paint and color the way it was meant to be. A second chance. Granted, for the first six months of relapse, I was in complete and utter agony every second of every day. I screamed and cried for hours on end to the point where sedation was the only option. I couldn't sleep in my own bed anymore and I couldn't leave my house.
I was as broken as broken could be because I couldn't trust my own mind anymore.
I couldn't trust my emotions or thoughts or logic. Absolutely zero trust that I would be okay. I wouldn't get in the car because I was scared of not being able to come home if the panic hit and I wouldn't know what to do. I couldn't watch the same shows or movies that once calmed me down. None of it was mine anymore. Every coping mechanism, every ounce of progress, everything was lost.
But even though the first six months were complete and utter hell, it was the quiet time I needed. Because my disease relapse had left me with nothing, I was given the task of finding new things about myself. New hobbies, new projects, new philosophy. Even as I rolled around on the filthy ground of rock bottom, I was growing whether I knew it or not.
Staring at blank white walls for 15 months gives you a lot of free time. A moment to sit and actually think about what I wanted in life. What had been the actual truth, and what had been a self-concocted lie. Slowly, rock bottom began to rise. I was able to come to terms with the fact that I'm different, or that my old self was not coming back. Instead of rising me back to who I once was, rock bottom was leading me to a better version of myself.
In some ways, it felt like rock bottom had been more of a tour guide to life rather than a place.
Rock bottom taught me that I needed to rely on only myself for happiness. Rock bottom showed me just how strong I really was. Rock bottom gave me a second chance, but it had to wipe the first chance clean first. Sadly, that just meant I needed to be traumatized enough to actually hit rock bottom.
Rock bottom gave me not only a platform to cling to but the ability to explore depths of myself that I had been scared to face. I was able to ask myself the questions I had spent so much time avoiding — while also giving me the time to actually think my answers through. What did I actually want? What things did I actually enjoy? Who did I actually want to be?
The truth is, I wouldn't know those things without hitting as low as I could go. Being stripped entirely of the identity I had built, and instead of being handed a clean one to start over with nothing but pure honesty. Rock bottom handed me a mirror to show me what I was surviving, and how much strength I actually had in order to survive. Not only that, but it showed me the abilities I could reach as I grew. To see the future that I actually wanted, rather than what I thought I wanted.
Do you know that awful feeling that your mind is as cluttered as the desktop of a computer? Rock bottom eliminated the thoughts. The random metaphorical post-it notes and stray papers sitting around. Instead of organizing them, rock bottom took a blow torch to them all and gave me an empty body to fill with my brand new mind. A complete factory reset. The past was changed, the present was erased, and the future was left for me to build — all because of the place we know as rock bottom.
So if there comes a time when you're faced with the prospect of reaching rock bottom, embrace it through the fear. It will be scary, horrific, and gutting. But it will be the pathway to the life you actually want to live. because you will need to fight to take back the reins and take them back completely.
