Free-falling is the implied scenario when people speak of hitting bottom. You kinda can’t have one without the other. But what they don’t tell you, is there are two types of hitting bottom: one is when you hit the bottom hard and everything smashes to pieces, and the other is when the change happens while you are still falling. You look around and you either say,
This is too much abrasion, the deeper I go. I’ve gotta stop.
Or
No way. I know this place and I’m not going.
Or you simply get bored and want to do something else. This one is quite surprising. You learn that where ‘bottom’ is now, is way closer to the surface than it used to be.
But in the words of my friend Sue, in all of these cases it ends the same, in taking charge of your life.
No judgement here. The free-falling experience itself is all kinds of things to all kinds of situations but one thing it is not, is being in control. Life sometimes requires complete, descending annihilation for us to lose what we don’t need to carry around. At other times, all that suffering gets old, untenable. Because we know better about this particular storm. Fuck this shit.
Or something in-between.
All of it is the human experience, and the least painful way to live it is to endure. Keep moving. Keep processing. Keep loving. Keep crying. Keep on. Lie down. Get back up. Let what is sliding, slide off.
And stand up lighter.
Brilliant! It’s so helpful in healing to have read the recent post about how dark and deep and difficult things felt, and then to read this post about connecting with your inner strength. You write so evocatively, so well, you take my hand and walk me through these experiences with you. And this one is empowering because of the way you share. I think you have excellent powers of recovery, and sharing it this way helps all of us to develop that skill also. So I send you lots of thanks and admiration and respect 💓
When I was a kid, I used to have dreams where I would free fall to ground, and then hit the ground. People told me that you could never hit the ground in a dream, or you would die. But I always hit the ground, and it was pretty much always the same. I would feel a sense of dizziness and shakiness at the suddenly lack of movement, and then I would wake up, literally, from sleep. Metaphorically this makes sense to me, as hitting bottom for anyone would hopefully have the end result of waking them up in some way.
I love that. Waking up. Bam. When I was a kid they told me you couldn’t die in dreams. I did once though, floating above my body and then waking up. I guess we are rule breakers.