Nobody asks for suffering. Nobody wakes up thinking, You know what would make today interesting? A complete emotional collapse. And yet, life doesn’t exactly wait for permission. One day, you’re fine. The next, you’re staring at the wreckage of everything you thought was solid.
And then come the well-meaning advice givers. Everything happens for a reason. Time heals all wounds. Stay positive. The verbal equivalent of slapping a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.
If I had to endure pain, I decided I wouldn’t let it be pointless. If life was going to take me to the depths, I’d make sure I didn’t leave empty-handed. Because the alternative—letting it break me for nothing—felt worse than the suffering itself.
The Break That Builds You
Hitting rock bottom doesn’t feel like a movie montage. It’s not some cinematic moment of clarity. It’s messy. It’s waking up in the middle of the night with a weight in your chest. It’s staring at a wall for hours. It’s losing track of time because your mind is stuck in an endless loop of what now?
But here’s what rock bottom does: it clears out the noise. The stories you told yourself, the masks you wore, the illusions you held onto because they were easier than the truth—they all get stripped away. What’s left is you, raw and real. And that’s when it happens. The moment you realize you’re still breathing. The moment you decide—quietly, stubbornly—that this isn’t where your story ends.
People love a good comeback story, but they skip the in-between—the part where you’re staring at the ruins, thinking, I don’t know how to do this. That’s where real transformation happens. And the version of you that walks out of that fire? Unrecognizable to the one who walked in.
Pain Is Power—If You Use It
Pain is raw energy. And energy, left sitting, turns toxic.
You can let it eat away at you, coil around your ribs, weigh down your every step. Or you can harness it. Turn it into something else.
Run until your legs give out. Write until your hands cramp. Build, change, fight. Just don’t let it sit there, festering. Unused pain curdles into bitterness, and bitterness makes people small. Small in their thinking. Small in their capacity to love. Small in the way they see the world.
Decide What This Means
Suffering doesn’t hand out automatic wisdom. It doesn’t come pre-packaged with a lesson. You decide what to make of it. You can let it hollow you out or sharpen you. Make you resentful or make you relentless.
Some people go through hell and come back with nothing but scars. Others come back carrying fire. The difference isn’t what happened—it’s what they did with it.
Walk Straight Through It
If you’re in the thick of it right now—if everything feels like too much, if you don’t recognize the person in the mirror—keep moving. Not around it. Not over it. Straight through.
Let it wreck you. Feel every bit of it. And then, when you’re done, get up. Take the grief, the rage, the fear, and mold it into something unbreakable.
If life insists on dragging you through fire, make sure you don’t come out ashes.
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