Rock Bottom

The worst part about finally achieving the happiness and contentment that you’ve always dreamed of is feeling it slip through your fingers. Feeling the hand that had found purchase in salvation lose its hold and force you back over the edge. Feeling the safety harness around your waist and in your chest snap. Feeling yourself slide down the steep slope you’ve fought your way up for years. Feeling your fingernails tear and bleed as you fight for purchase on a cliff so smooth you can see the scratches you’ve made reflected in your own face. Feeling your body hit the ground so hard you’re not sure if you’ll be able to get back up again. And as you lie at the bottom of the canyon you had so nearly escaped, broken, bloody, and beaten, you begin to realize that it’s grown deeper since the last time you had been there. You realize that while you had been so distracted by the prospect of finally climbing out, you’d never noticed that the cliff had been growing just as fast as you had been climbing. You realize that you will never win, that you were never going to. You have lost your uphill battle, and after falling thousands of feet to rock bottom, you wonder if another six would even matter.