this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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AskBeehaw
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In a lot of ways, my lowest point was loss from having a severe mental health crisis and losing my mind, my beloved partner of 15 years, my job (admittedly job stress was part of total breakdown, so maybe this was a bonus??), my “I’m a serious artist” hobby, my savings (now in debt), and most of my friends. 3 mos later, my best friend my cat was hit by a car, partly due to my own housing instability which racked me with guilt.
BUT my true lowest point internal suffering wise was 7 years earlier, when I became deeply depressed and freaked out fearing I’d lose all the things I ended up losing for reals! That actually hurt a lot worse inside than when I actually had to cope with what I feared most.
AND despite the loss, when I was 22, I probably still would have traded for my physical post-loss life circumstances. Yet I don’t think of my life at 22 as a “low point”, I was just used to having a lot less.
Realizing both (1) and (2) is one of the things that help me to get through the “lowest point”. They reminded me that a lot of “lowest point” is perspective. It didn’t like magically fix anything, the pain from loss is/was still very raw, persistent and real. But it helped me to a little bit see that it was the gift of having things that made a low point when I didn’t have them anymore.
So, in retrospect you cherished what you had and realised you were better off for having had them in the first place?
How are you doing now my friend?
I don’t have a pat retrospective on this: when you have things you love, and things change, its only human to get hung up on that and feel very low. At the same time, starting to understand a little that its the having of things that makes the losing of things suck (“lowest point”) makes a small but ongoing difference.
As to the present, I have a job again, live in a beautiful place, healed some relationships and made some new friends, etc. I still can’t bring myself to get a new cat lol. Guess I’m a one-life-one-cat sorta dude 😂. Its not the same as my “old life”, and I still desperately miss it at times.
I suppose my takeaway from all this is: lowest point is all about perspective. You can’t just take a new perspective and feel stoked when things are hard, but remembering that its a perspective can help when you’re looking into what is to you the bowels of hell.