Hitting rock bottom

You might think that falling asleep using your doormat as a pillow because you couldn’t find the keys which slipped through your fingers and landed on the floor two feet from where your head hit the doormat the night before, is what’s called hitting rock bottom, but no! Unless this is something that occur more than once or twice in a lifetime, this is only a sign of a night at the local pub that got slightly out of hand, with friends whos partyfactor is a little over the top. No, I hit rock bottom years before my cheek hit my very uncomfortable doormat.

It’s suprisingly easy to hit rock bottom when you feel abandoned, lost and lonley. Especially if your emotions, and not to mention your ability of judgment is sedated with substances you can buy at the liquor store, the farmacy and those slightly more sleazy parts of the open market.

Take a good look at this picture! This was taken years after my heart, mind and soul was ripped apart at their seams and spread with the winds like the violence of a hurricane within. It was years since I was wandering in the dark searching for something, anything that could give me a clue about who I am. I guess that’s what’s called an utterly, devastating identity crisis. When this picture was taken I was on my way back on track.

I had found the first little piece of my self in an article about Judas Iskariot, of all things, in National Geographic, recovering from a spontaneous pneumothorax, (just google the damn thing!), at the intensiv care at the Akershus University hospital. Yes, I was very high on morphin at the moment. I was also wasted the entire eight weeks when I graduated with three straight A’s at my bachelor-degree, but that’s not the point. I didn’t lose my self to drugs. I lost my self to bullies and psychopaths.

Nevertheless… I had managed to graduate some subjects as math, science, history, english etc. and was at the moment studying at Oslo Met to become a teacher of art and craft when I hit rock bottom. Yes, I’m saying I was on my way up when I fell down, again, and hit rock bottom. I guess that’s how recovery from shit happens; ups and downs and ups again. I hit rock bottom somewhere near Trondheim. This was the point where I asked my self the big question «WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING???». The picture above is a consequense of me hitting rock bottom. Or rather: rock bottom hitting me. Really hard. In my face. It was when I announced my departure, (from the rock bottom), that he hit me. With a howling biip at a decibel equal to a rather big kindergarden ringing in my left ear, I considered burning the house down with the rock bottom inside, but I decided that I wouldn’t spend one more minute of my life on the rock bottom, especially not in jail. As mentioned earlier I can’t have kittens doing time which again would make me very unhappy. This photo has kept the rock bottom at a proper distance of minimum two hundred and seventy miles ever since I published it on facebook, so my worries about a lack of cats in my life was fortunatly proven wrong.

Wether I pour gazoline over a mans head and set him on fire, or not, doesn’t really have anything to do with what he has or has not done. It all depends on my ability to control my self, my urges, to analyze the consequences of my actions and choose my life, and my future over the exquisite satisfaction of his sudden death. I hit the rock bottom because I chose not to listen to my own judgement. Those alarming bells ringing in my ears, and those red lights blinking behind my eyelids. I deliberatly chose to ignore them. Deliberatly in that sence that I had been manipulated my hole life not to believe in my self. I came to some brutal conclusions that summer. Took some unsentimental choices. Burned a lot of bridges. Then I started the hard work it is taking back control of one’s own life.

Stress managment. Coping strategies. Mindfullness. The sound of these words bring me to the edge of hyperventilation. Just a smack on my lips of these expressions, and I feel my muscels tighten all the way from my butt to my eyebrows. Because if I want to learn this, I have to get in touch with my feelings, which each and every singel cell in my body is protesting against. I have to sit down in my all so brave psychologists office and dig up every little shitty feeling I have buried with the rotting corps of my lost soul. Anger and hate. Fear and sorrow. Insecurity, shame, vindictiveness. Jealousy and loneliness. Every little feeling this poor wretch has denied since nursery stage shall be dragged to the surface and analyzed, one by one, and then I have to learn how to cope with them. Makes me feel like a pussy in front of Trump; defenseless and vulnerable. My shrink has spent two years only to make me sit still long enough to finish one such exercise. She’s very patient that lady, but we did it. Not because she didn’t give up, it’s her proffesion after all, but because I didn’t give up. I made the decision to stop oppressing my self. To care for my heart, my mind and my soul. To acknowlege my feelings because my life is shaped by them.

By the way; this ex drowned three weeks after I published this text in Norwegian, autumn 2017. I could honestly not care less.