ROCK BOTTOM

Wisdom from Josh, Part 3

In the last post, I wrote about the balance between empathy and turning the conversation to myself. It’s hard to find that balance, and sometimes I need to talk with a friend about myself and what I’m going through. Sometimes we have a lot in common. Sometimes it just feels good to talk—and to listen.

So while it’s true that I haven’t been in a motorcycle accident like Josh, and he hasn’t been locked up in a mental institution like me, we do have a major thing in common: we’ve both hit rock bottom.

I’d heard that term—rock bottom—before I experienced it, and in the past, I’d imagined what it felt like. Specifically, I’d imagined that rock bottom was boldly defined with sharp edges and black lines. That it had boundaries, like the edge of a map or the bottom of a container. That physically, one could go no further. That you’d know it immediately—that it would be so obvious and apparent that no one could mistake it. Like being slapped in the face, I’d know it happened.

But when rock bottom happened to me, I realized it was amorphous and I was the one who defined rock bottom for myself. I was the one who said, I’m not letting it get any worse.

Rock bottom was the point where I looked around and made the conscious choice that if there was any lower to go, I wasn’t doing it. No way in hell. I was determined to do anything to feel better and to never, ever go to the deep dark depressed place in my brain again.

Never.

Josh shared with me that he’d previously hit rock bottom in other areas and rebuilt his life, but he’d thought, at least I’ll always have my body, since I’m in charge of that.

Enter God/the Universe to say to him, “Nope.”

He told me that with a wry grin. He also said that when he was sprawled on the pavement with his motorcycle crushing his leg, Death came for him.

And he decided not to go along with Death.

At the most basic, elemental, and important level, he chose life.

While he didn’t choose the accident, he did choose to move forward. And that’s what defines rock bottom—the choice.

Rock bottom is when your life has gone down so much that the only further step down is death.

And to that we both said, “Nope.”

We both could have given up. I could have succumbed to the illness inside my brain and let that train come for me on its track. He could have decided that there, on the freeway onramp, hurt on the asphalt, he was done.

We didn’t.

I resolved to claw my way up and out and to do whatever it took to get better. To never see that place of depression and hurting again.

Josh is doing the same, and in any interaction with him, you can see the spirit inside him—the steely inner resolve to recover.

Recovering from rock bottom is not instantaneous. I experienced it more as a series of daily choices and a strict and severe determination to do whatever it took to not be in the place, mentally or physically, that I’d been in. For me, it took more than eighteen months before I could say that I was back.

Josh knows it’s going to take him some time. He thinks it might be two years before he’s back to deadlifting his goal. He also told me that he knew he could choose anger on a daily basis, and he wasn’t going to. He repeatedly chose and continues to choose love.

But we both had a choice—a very clear, very straightforward, but tough answer to the question that defined the edge of our rock bottom moment: Do I give up?

No and no and a thousand times no.

In case you’ve hit rock bottom and are looking for some hope, I wanted to write this post for you. I also wanted to give you some resources.

First, back then—and who am I kidding, still—I cling to this quote by J.K. Rowling:

I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

There’s the idea. It’s a new beginning.

Rock bottom was the foundation for me to build a new life, one full of life and love and things I chose.

I can see Josh building his life anew—one that’s physically different and that’s surely changed him on the inside—but it’s a new life, and it’s his.

Second, surrender to the newborn you rising out of the ashes. What do I mean by surrender? You’re going to find out new things about yourself that you’d never discover if you weren’t forced to discover them. Celebrate them, because they’re who you are now, not who you were back then.

I acted out—colored outside the lines for a while—with purple hair and otherwise. It helped me figure out who this raw person was that I was becoming.

Josh 2.0 is a newborn, too. He made it clear to me when he talked about the indignities of being physically unable to move in the hospital, that he’s surrendered to this new normal.

He’s being swept clean of past ego and rebuilding anew this new person. One who is courageous and makes those daily decisions to move forward and step into life, albeit a life he wouldn’t have recognized prior to the accident.

He told me there’s a time to be angry. And a time to love. And he was turning against anger and into love.

Turning into love.

Finally, if you’re reading this and want some hope, know you’re not alone. We have hit rock bottom. And we are still reemerging stronger. Like a metamorphic rock that is chemically completely different than how it had been before it was bathed in fire, we’re now made up of new substance, new resolve, new ideas, and new meaning in our lives.

You can have that too.

Choose love, like Josh.