Bottom Of The Rocks

—

“It could always be worse,” the gatekeeper chuckles as he playfully tosses another stone atop the growing pile of metaphoric challenges in my life. My back, the one holding the weight with a decidedly less jovial perspective, aches as the stone clanks against the pile and awkwardly bobbles its way down amid the rocks until it finds its resting place.

I feel I may be reaching the threshold of my capacity to hold on, to hold out. Soon my frame will become too weak to bear the mass, and I will buckle and fall, collapsed beneath it all.

As my knees begin to shake and my thoughts go rapidly toward the growing-sharp pain in the center of my back, panic becomes me.

Overwhelm, to a new depth, is now flooding my veins and Fear whispers dark in my ear, “Just give up… Just give it all up… Nothing is working… The world is against you… You are doing it all wrong… Just give up.”

It is in this moment, when a stray bead of sweat slides down my forehead and dangles like an expert climber on the overhang of my brow, that an unexpected smile cracks suddenly upon my face.

Resigned to my experience, I finally release my resistance.

Irreverently I think to myself, “It is what it is.”

There is a fine line between surrender and acceptance—between giving-up and giving-in— that is wide enough to house a struggling man as he holds the seeming weight of the world. It is here I find myself.

Smiling a slightly mischievous grin with a heart still shrink-wrapped in tears, here I am. I have nowhere else to be, nowhere left to go.

I am at the bottom of the rocks. This is rock bottom.

And hey, “it could always be worse.”

But deep in the confines of my still-beating heart, I know:

Now that my resistance has been relinquished, I know it will only get better.

—

What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.

◊♦◊

Sign up for our Writing Prompts email to receive writing inspiration in your inbox twice per week.

If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.