At Your Lowest Point, Your Only Direction Is Up

Rock bottom. You’ve been spiraling, spinning, falling, and now you’ve crashed. You’ve sunk. You’ve shattered into what feels like a million pieces and you don’t have the strength to rise again. Parts of your heart are sprinkled all over the ground, getting trampled as people walk through, crumbling to dust and being taken by the wind.

You feel as if this is the end, the inevitable decline to the complete brokenness. You don’t want to move for fear of being pushed even farther. You don’t know which direction to turn. You’ve curled yourself into a ball and feel as if the only thing you can do is sit still, lost and numb.

You’ve forgotten who you are, you’ve distanced from those who care about you, you feel empty.

This is your lowest point.

But the beautiful thing about your lowest point, about reaching an end, about falling and crashing and hitting the ground, is that the only direction you can take from here is up.

You must gather what’s left of your pride and strength and rise to your feet again. You must find it within yourself to stand, to flex your muscles, to believe that something greater is coming and there is a purpose for what you’ve experienced. You must ask for help. You must know that this pain will build you, mold you, shape you, teach you.

You must believe that every second you stay alive and fight, you are already winning the battle.

I know it seems hopeless. I know you feel weak and purposeless. I know the last thing you think you can do is find your footing. I know it seems futile to wander around, picking up the broken pieces of your heart, or believing in anything good anymore.

But when you lose who you are, when you fall, when you break and when you’re defeated—you’ve reached your lowest moments. You cannot go any lower. You cannot be broken any further.

And you cannot be destroyed.

This is not the end. This is only the beginning of the next step. This is the moment where you hit ‘restart,’ and you begin anew.

This is the new page of your story, the new chapter, the new book on the shelf of your life—and this time you get to write the ending. This is the time where you find faith, where you believe in the power of your bones and blood, where you remember who you are and have always been. This is the time where you reach out to others, where you seek help, where you talk about what’s been burdening you and let yourself be opened to the light again. This is the time you realize you are loved, so incredibly much.

And you must fight for that love, and fight to love yourself.

You are broken. But not beyond repair.

This is your lowest point, but you’re not finished. From this dust and brokenness you will rise. From your failures you will flourish. From your pain you will find purpose. From the ache you will allow love and growth and rebirth.

You will be strong because the only direction from here is up, not lower, not weaker, not anything less. I know you don’t want to move, don’t want to try, don’t want to exist another day.

But you must remember that this is not where your story concludes.
Turn the page. Start a new chapter. Open a new book.

This is not an ending, but an epilogue, where you say what happened to you but how you grew from it, how it changed you, how you became and rose from those lowest moments.

This is the part of the book where you preview the next story—one the rest of the world can’t wait to read.

Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.