I used to think hitting rock bottom meant something dramatic. Jail. Divorce. Waking up in a gas station bathroom with a busted lip and no shoes. But the real kind of hell isn’t always loud. It’s subtle. It’s ordinary. It’s sitting in your own living room surrounded by things you chose, wondering how the hell you still feel like a ghost in your own life.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ve been there a few times.
More than a few.
Some people go to therapy.
I went to war with myself in the form of late nights, cheap drinks, good lies, and the wrong kind of women who were just wounded enough to understand me and just unstable enough to let me ruin it.
They say hell is other people.
Sometimes it’s just a mirror and the sound of your own voice saying, “It’s fine,” when it’s not.
But here’s the thing:
Funny thing about hell. Once you’ve been through it enough times, you know the way back. But you also know the burns aren’t worth the scars unless there’s someone willing to meet you halfway.
That’s the part they don’t put on coffee mugs.
Hell teaches you navigation.
But it also teaches you when to turn around.
It teaches you that survival isn’t enough. That crawling out of the pit only matters if someone’s waiting to walk with you after. Otherwise you just become a well-dressed corpse who knows how to hide the smoke.
I’ve learned to tell the difference between pain that changes you and pain that just wants your attention.
I’ve learned that not every apology needs to be said out loud. Some are quieter. They look like silence. Boundaries. Showing up on time. Drinking water instead of whiskey when everything in your body wants the opposite.
You don’t claw your way out of hell to become a better man.
You do it so you can look someone in the eyes one day and not flinch.
So yeah. I know the way back.
But unless there’s someone worth meeting in the middle of all that ash and memory, I’ll just stay out here by the fire I built myself.
It’s not pretty.
But it’s warm.
And it doesn’t ask me to bleed to feel like I belong.