Rock Bottom

I’ve mention my rock bottom often, but I realized I’ve never talked about what happened in that rock bottom.

I feel I’ve heard it be called other phrases like “midnight hour”, “dark night of the soul.” For me, I just remember in a non-funny way saying “FML”. I realized I was in a bad place and I didn’t know how I was gonna get out of it.

In short, my mind was not functioning, I couldn’t connect with people, and I had no joy. I had a lot of hate actually. I’d like to say that that was never me, but in hindsight, that’s been a big part of me. I just hid it well. I often hid it from myself too. This rock bottom was an opportunity to reveal a problem that has always been in my life.

I’d say that the problem this rock bottom revealed was a problem of the heart. Not my physical heart, but the heart that’s the core of who I am. Yeah I walked and talked and lived and looked normal from other peoples’ perspective, but I knew there was something wrong and this rock bottom made it apparent.

The best way I can describe the problem of my heart is that it was hardened. I didn’t let people in, I didn’t let myself enjoy myself, I didn’t feel loved. When you live a lonely life, your spiritual heart stops working. I was very popular for good stretches of my life, yet truly lonely with a suffering heart.

There was a point where I didn’t want to live this lie anymore. I wanted to be well for me and for the potential people who would get to experience the true me. The early stages of this transition were messy, embarrassing, like a constant earthquake in my life. Nothing was certain because the life I made up, to live safe and with a protected heart, was going down in exchange for the unknown new.

I wanted so badly to put back on the blanket of a pretend well life, and I did now and then, like relapsing for an addiction, but ultimately I kept moving forward in the right direction.

I don’t know how to end this blog post because I’m still in progress. There’s no conclusion to be said yet. What I’d like to say is that I purposely live life at a slower pace to listen to my heart: to check if I’m pretending, just going through the motions, or living from a place of who I truly am, what I truly love, and what I’m meant to do.