The Day I Hit Rock Bottom

I didn’t know rock bottom had a sound until I heard it echo through my bones.

It was a Tuesday. Not a particularly tragic day on the calendar—just dull, grey, and forgettable. The kind of day no one writes poetry about. The rain wasn’t the cinematic kind that brings relief or romance—it was cold, stinging, and indifferent. My coat clung to me like a heavy reminder of everything I was carrying but trying to hide.

I had just left a job interview where I smiled too wide and lied too well. I told the manager how “excited” I was to work in a soulless role I didn’t want, just to keep the lights on. I remember sitting on that metal bench at the train station, hands trembling from cold and exhaustion. My phone was dead. My wallet was almost empty. My hope was on its last breath.

It wasn’t one thing. That’s the trap people fall into—they look for one dramatic moment to define rock bottom. But in reality, it’s not an explosion. It’s a slow leak. It’s the accumulation of quiet defeats: rent overdue for the second month in a row, unanswered messages from friends who stopped checking in, rejection letters piling up like snowdrifts around your dreams. It’s the day you realize you can’t remember the last time you felt joy—not the manufactured kind, but the real, soul-deep joy that makes your chest feel light.

That Tuesday, I had $7.23 in my account. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days. I hadn’t spoken to anyone—not really spoken—in over a week. Not since my mother called and I told her, “I’m fine,” and she believed me. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just didn’t know what else to say.

I remember watching the train approach and thinking—not about ending things, but about escaping. About disappearing. About what it might feel like to let go of everything and just... stop. The thought scared me, not because I had it, but because it felt like a relief. And that’s when I knew: this wasn’t just a rough patch. This was my bottom.

But here’s what happened next.

I went home. Not to warmth or comfort. Just a cold apartment, the kind where the silence rings louder than the city outside. The fridge held half a jar of peanut butter and a bruised apple. The heater had stopped working the week before. Still, I went home. That, in itself, was an act of survival. And survival, even at its quietest, is a form of courage.

I collapsed onto the floor. Not out of drama, but because I had nothing left to hold me upright. I cried. Not the kind of tears you see in movies—these were raw, ugly, soul-purging tears. My chest hurt from holding in so much for so long. And for the first time, I let it all out.

Then something strange happened. I started talking to myself—not out loud, but in that small, steady voice inside, the one that had been silenced by fear and shame. And I said:

If this is rock bottom, then everything from here is up. Even one step counts.

So I made one.

I pulled out an old notebook and made a list—not of goals, but of truths. Not dreams, but reminders:

1. I am still here.


2. I am not broken—only bruised.


3. I want more. And I deserve more.


4. This moment does not define me, but what I do next might.



The next morning, I walked to the library. I couldn’t afford coffee, but the library was free—and warm—and quiet. I sat between the aisles, surrounded by the voices of people who had been through worse and lived to tell it. I read about survival. About resilience. About failure and comeback. I felt less alone in those pages than I had in my entire city.

That week, I applied for three jobs I actually wanted. Not just the ones I thought I could get. I also wrote a blog post—just a simple one about what I’d been feeling. Three people read it. One of them sent a message saying, “I needed this.” That was the first time in months I felt like I mattered.

Weeks passed. Then months. I got a job—not glamorous, but honest. I started cooking again. I reached out to a friend I hadn’t spoken to in over a year. I told her the truth. She didn’t run. She came over with groceries and stayed the night just to make sure I slept.

I started writing again—poems, stories, fragments of the person I was trying to rebuild. I smiled at strangers, and some of them smiled back. I started to trust that maybe—just maybe—things could get better.

And now, years later, I look back at that Tuesday not with shame, but with gratitude. Because sometimes, the ground has to fall away for you to finally land on yourself. Sometimes you have to lose everything that isn’t real to find what is.

Rock bottom isn’t the end.

For me, it was the beginning.