Read This When You’ve Hit Your Lowest Point

Everyone has their lowest point, their rock bottom. But what happens when your rock bottom isn’t actually the bottom? You start to sink lower and lower. Instead of beginning to heal, you break down further. The real honest truth about rock bottom is that you usually don’t know you’re there.

But this was it. Rock bottom. The emptiness, sadness, and aching, that’s all part of it. You stand there, looking at yourself in the mirror, confused. Because at one point you knew that person, but now when you look in the mirror, you see the bags under your eyes from sleepless nights, the redness from crying, and the overall fatigue of your figure. It’s everything you said you would never let yourself get to. All the therapy, all the work you put in to keep yourself stable, just shattered on the floor. You have become your worst fear—broken.

And you can see it when you look at yourself when you lay in bed and in every move you make. In every mistake. In every breath. In every moment. You have slowly crept to a place where you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. And you’re embarrassed. Embarrassed that you have let it get to this point. That you’ve let yourself get to the rock bottom your friends warned you about for months. They told you time and time again that you could let the pain out with them. You could lean on them, but you didn’t want to burden them. Now look at you. The minuscule part of the love you once felt for things is gone. You’re just not sure who this person is.

You’ve lost all control of your emotions, your body, your mind. Every good feeling you once had is gone. Doing the things you once loved and had a passion for feels like more of a chore. Getting out of bed and even showering takes hours to work up the energy to do. And now what’s left in you is the scary emptiness you’ve always heard about. You’re anxious. You’re heartbroken.

And there’s no reason to not be happy. You have things. But it always comes back to the lonely. To the losses. The struggle to remember what is real and what’s not. Putting a face on every day has weighed you down. Having to pretend to be okay for so long just broke you down more in the end.

Rock bottom was never supposed to come. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Living a lie was always supposed to just work for you. And it did. Everything works for a while. And it’s easy to keep going with what you know versus confronting things that you’ve pushed down.

You went through and are still going through this pain that has left you shattered. Maybe you lost someone you loved, your health declined, or you let your mental health plummet, but you are taking the first step right now: admitting that you’ve hit rock bottom and aren’t very sure where to start digging yourself out. It is going to be hard and time-consuming. It’s going to drain you, but allow yourself time to heal and recharge.

Slowly, you will heal. You’ll start to see things in color again instead of black and white. There is beauty in rock bottom. The thing that sucks is that the feeling you’re feeling right now—the helplessness, the embarrassment, the pain—isn’t just something you can bottle up and spray on yourself to remind yourself how bad this feels. Scream. Cry. Break stuff. Let the pain in so you can grow from it. Putting the pain to the side will just dig you deeper.

Don’t let rock bottom win.

Keep going.