Isn't saying that you have to hit rock bottom before you can turn around the same as saying the lost item you are looking for will be found in the last place you look?
How do you know when you have hit rock bottom so you know it's safe to turn around? What if you don’t get there and you turn around too early and have to go back? Or what if you're a real competitive, disciplined and diligent rock bottomer and you have to do it better than anyone else? Don’t you then have to pay attention to where others hit rock bottom and lived to tell about it? Then don’t you have to say, “Damn, that ain't nothin'. Wait until you see my rock bottom, I'm going to be the most rockiest rock-bottomer of them all."
Problem comes, darn it, when you set the world record, someone else had to go down there and take it away from you. Then you have no choice. You have to say your good-byes, write your will, stock up on bankrupting accessories, call your boss the offspring of a fornicating corpse with no mother, splash a weeks worth of a chamber pot in the face of the only person that ever loved you and dive in once again.
I hit rock bottom once. And several times before that.
I think the first time was when I was about age 4 and 2 months old. At that moment in time I realized that clothing and shoes came in different fashions as I was on my way down to the Harts, a family of 6 boys--all older than me--and all athletes. I knew my outfit (that I knew it was an outfit should say everything) was not going to go over well with the Hart brothers. This would have never occurred to me in the long previous 4 years of my long life.
My mother had dressed me. I was wearing my cute white nurses’ uniform shoes (that’s what I called them as I’d been in a hospital already and had kicked a nurse in the shin that had stuck a needle in me and could only remember her white shoes [I didn’t know at that time that you didn’t kick someone who stuck a needle in you]) and the cute little white shirt, black suspenders, cuffed light blue shorts, and cute little brown old-fashioned polo jacket with fake pockets and a little shield over the pocket over my heart.
I had then done something unspeakable to those clothes. I don’t remember what it was but I know it made my mom cry. This made me feel bad. I didn’t know why it made her cry. I know now it was because she knew the dress-me-up days were over and it was probably straight to swearing after that.
Then there were a couple of times between 5 and 7. Can't remember what set me off during those times nor why but I know it always had something to do with my parents. Then I, alone or with my older brother, would run away to my grandmothers home to live forever, or at least until after she fed us.
But rock bottom?
That was about at age eight. That’s when my Dad--due to some lengthy period of a complete lack of discipline on my part and that of my brother--finally had enough of our messy room. He took the entire contents thereof, gathered it up into a blanket and donated it to the Salt Lake County Waste Disposal Services. Those contents will someday be dug up a few million years from now by whatever intelligent creatures evolve to take our place after we all die from global warming. They will probably look like Seagulls with residual wings.
After my Dad did this, my older brother and I filled our army surplus canteens with old fashioned tap water, loaded up on a few storage items and headed out. This time we resolved to never return, ever. We both promised this several times to each other. First we passed from the Canyon Rim area through the wilderness border into the no-man's land that was Wasatch Blvd and scrambled into the beat up foothills that would, over the next 20 years, be filled with a new thing called split level houses. Then we started our climb to freedom–up into the wilderness of Snake Mountain.
We made it halfway up. It started to snow. We didn’t have gloves or hats. My brother said we should probably go back. I told him no, we hadn’t even drunk all of our water nor eaten our bottled peaches. Yes, he said, that was right but he had been carrying the peaches and they weighed a ton and that the canteens weighed a ton more and he didn’t know how the hell we had won WWII and the Korean war with such lousy canteens. So he said we had to go back. I started to cry, because we couldn’t go back, it would be too embarrassing. I told him we hadn’t even hit rock bottom.
He told me to suit myself, I could hit rock bottom if I wanted, but he was going back. He said he didn’t like all his stupid stuff anyway and that the seagulls could poop on part of it, eat the rest and regurgitate it into the Great Salt Lake.
I stood there for a long time, staring up into the mountain that was shrouded in clouds. I knew that there was some paradise being hidden under that blanket of clouds, just up over the peak. I let the snow coat my long, blond hair and drip cold down my face. Then, in humiliation, I turned back, yelling at my brother to hold up. I swore I would return and someday make it to that paradise.
That day has been the ruin of my life. I always look up and want to hit that rock bottom at the tops of the peaks, whether it’s too warm, too sunny, too cold, too dark, too early or I am too, whatever. When did you hit rock bottom? Hopefully for you it was bottom enough. For me it never will be and it will be the death of me I am sure.
Loren M. Lambert, December 10, 2015 ©
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