Sunday, August 17, 2014

Dancing on the Rocks.

You often hear people say (especially in faith stories) that they hit "rock bottom" and then their life turned around from there and things got better. Which makes be wonder: Where is/was my rock bottom? I thought it was the time I first attempted to take my own life, but things only seemed to get worse from there because I made a second attempt shortly after the first. After my third suicide attempt, I started to wonder if I would ever hit rock bottom. When would things start to get better? When would I begin to want to live? It seemed as if every time things began to look hopeful, something terrible happened and I ended up feeling even worse than before. Wave after wave, storm after storm, I felt increasingly weak and powerless. So I kept asking the question: What is my rock bottom?

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine and I asked him what he thought about it. He said something like, "Maybe you're at rock bottom and you've just been there for a while. Maybe life for you right now is about learning to dance on the rocks." I liked that a lot. Life seems so relentless--everything keeps coming at me, regardless of whether I am prepared for another trial or not--so it was very reassuring to hear him say that. It helped to hear someone say that life sucks, but I can still find joy in it.

I had always thought that rock bottom was a turning point--the worst point in your life before things start to turn around--and that you don't stay at rock bottom for very long. Maybe my lowest point in life isn't a single point, but a few (or maybe many) years of trials. But that shouldn't affect my ability to find joy in the little pieces of life that make me smile or the times when life doesn't seem so bad, even if it's only for a moment.

Maybe my life is about learning to dance on the rocks.