It seems I am in a state of indecision, life seems anything but routine, each drastic change on the heels of the change before, each one the one I convince myself will be the last big change for a while. I tell myself this lie because one day it may be so. Maybe there really will be a long length of time where nothing happens, and by nothing I mean nothing earth shattering bad.
I know that life has regular peaks and valleys and normally a few of those valleys will cause you to stop and hesitate before restarting your journey back up the mountain and that is normal. But over the past few years, I have had so many falls towards the valleys while on my journey that the peaks seem almost non-existent and the valleys just seem to grow deeper, even when I thought deeper was not possible. I guess you would say most people refer to this place as ‘rock bottom’ but when do you really know it is rock bottom? That may sound like a stupid question but what I discovered is that you only know when rock bottom is when you are back on your journey up the mountain towards the peak again and you can see what was behind you, from a distance, a growing perspective.
In general, I think most people in their life feel like they climb towards the peak every day. The peak is the pinnacle of life; all the goals you have, the promise, the love you feel, in one place…the place where you are trying to go, in essence it is the best of you. The valley below is where you land when you fall from your peak but let’s face it, it doesn’t seem like the majority of people have fallen all the way to the bottom. After all, that is a really long way. Somehow I think most people catch themselves as they fall, like snagging their shirt on a branch sticking out of the mountain, and while they are bruised and banged up, they dangle, still attached to the mountain. It is a scary thought but to me this seems like the best way to describe this process. Now, imagine that this person who fell and is caught on the branch, is able to cling to the mountain again. Scared, this person pauses to catch their breath and regain their barring, but eventually, when strength and confidence are regained, the decision is made to slowly start to climb again. This decision begins the recovery process and the forward journey towards the sunny peak at the top. I think it is reasonable to assume that most people in their life climb (and re-climb) the same mountain, over and over again, sliding, losing some progress made, they adjust, gaining strength from lessons learned, from experience, in order to propel themselves further each day thereafter.
But what happens when you actually fall from the mountain to the valley below and you are not caught by a branch? What happens when your bones are broken and you are laying on the valley floor, disoriented, in pain, and all you want to do is shut your eyes, maybe even forever, because the pain is so great? All you can feel is the pain, all you see is darkness all around you. No one is there with you. You are broken, and alone in the dark, disoriented because the fall happened so fast. Even if you did know where you were it wouldn’t help because you can’t see clearly, every way is simultaneously both the right direction and the wrong direction and you can’t tell which is which because your internal compass was smashed in the fall. It pretty much feels like everything has been smashed in the fall, everything except the memory of the moment before you fell and then the fall itself into the darkness.
I know this seems like such an elementary and dramatic way to describe my life’s journey over the past several years but it is the best analogy I have. A few years back I fell from my mountain. Before that, I had slipped down but never too far. I have always had a good grip, feeling I was being groomed to be an expert mountain climber from birth with the many valleys I encountered in hindsight. So before my big fall, I wasn’t even entertaining the thought of totally falling, why would I be? Instead I used my falls to build my technique, I climbed slower at times but always kept climbing. The thing I like about life and “mountain climbing” is that for me, I can’t ever see the top, I have no nirvana peak, I just enjoy the journey, scars healing, badges of honor, growing experiences, moving upwards.
I had my furthest fall two years before the big fall. I uprooted my entire life, changed everything that I knew, became someone I never was before and left behind all that I knew and I loved to begin a new chapter of my life on the other side of the world. This was both extremely liberating and very scary. The excitement clouded my doubt and muted my inner ‘what-if’s’ and I just said fuck it. I am going for it. I was aware that I muted my inner doubts but in this case, I felt I had to in order to really live. I would have forever regretted letting this decision, the opportunity, pass by because I talked myself out of it…so I talked myself into it. And I was scared and lonely at times and challenged in a way I never was before, and I grew in a way that I never had before, I was growing into a different version of the independent me I always knew, and I liked it.
But it was coming, my big fall was, and I sensed it but again, I muted the inner me, the fear in me, to press on. After all, you have to give yourself the opportunity to explore and to fall so you know what you are made of. In all the years of my journey thus far, all the experience I had gained, somehow instantly disappeared and it had (contrary to what I believed) not prepared me for what was about to happen to me. When I fell, I fell hard. And when I broke on the floor, I prayed for it to be over, literally. This is something I never, ever did before. I was a ‘glass is half full’ kind of a person. Here, at the valley bottom, I didn’t even have a glass anymore.
With time I slowly made progress. One day I opened one eye, a few days later the other. Weeks later I wiggled my finger and months later I sat up. Eventually I stood up once my bones mended and my outward bruises faded but I realized quickly that my bones didn’t set the right way and after taking my first steps, I wasn’t walking the same either. Slowly and probably out of habit, I started to climb, millimeter by millimeter, day after day. I adjusted to the new me that I hardly recognized and still in the darkness, I climbed. Eventually, after a couple of years and after several small falls, I saw light. Not a lot but it was light, it was hope, and I painfully climbed in it’s direction.
What I realize now is that I fell so far from the mountain into the valley below, that now that I have oriented myself and can see because I have made it out of the valley, it turns out that I am climbing an entirely new mountain. I can see my old mountain but it is silhouetted on the skyline. I recognize it but I can’t climb to it, there is no way back. Because I can never reach it, it now parallels my new journey up this new mountain that I find myself on. Never out of view, it shadows me. The terrain of this new mountain is nothing like my old mountain, although I have found that what I thought was broken parts of me that mended incorrectly, actually, at times, helps me navigate this new mountain and obstacles ahead of me. I anticipate more, can prepare a bit more (although I am painfully aware that emotional preparation is actually almost all an illusion). But, I find a way to turn my injuries into abilities, and this gives me small wins along my journey and helps propel me forward.
I am scared now though and like dogs in distress on the 4th of July at the sounds of fireworks cracking and booming in the night, I too flinch as life’s rock slides as they roll by dangerously close to me, even if they are sometimes far enough away that I know I will avoid impact, I still can not seem to shake away the ‘what-if’s’. Now, nearly everything seems too close for comfort.
And so here I climb, today is the 1,305th day of my journey. It sounds like a lot but if the days are counted as memories, it all seems like just yesterday. I have more sunny days than cloudy ones although I have weathered some pretty awful storms in between and I know, eventually, more will come. Maybe I am only still climbing because I am stubborn and because I truly know love and want to hold on to it until forever comes and while I don’t want to rush or tempt fate, I can honestly say that I do look forward to quiet one day. But not yet. Not even soon because in a way I feel my journey is just beginning and somehow or another, I finally feel like the most well-equipped mountain climber that ever was. And for that I can say I am truly thankful.
The Memory Cellar 