Chapter 1: Rock Bottom Has a Basement
They say rock bottom is the lowest you can go. I believed that too—until I kept falling, even after I thought I had nothing left to lose. Rock bottom has a basement. And I lived in it.No lights. No peace. No voice loud enough to scream my pain. Just silence—and the echo of everything I had ever lost: time, people, parts of myself I thought I'd never get back.At first, I tried to pretend I was fine. You know, smile in public, suffer in private. I became so good at hiding my pain that even I almost believed I was okay. But the truth? I was drowning. Quietly. Slowly. Painfully. It wasn't one big tragedy that broke me. It was a collection of small cracks—moments, betrayals, disappointments, and heartbreaks—that finally shattered me. You don't realize how fragile you are until the weight of pretending crushes you remember one night, lying on the floor—not the bed, because even the bed felt too soft for the kind of hardness I was feeling inside. I stared at the ceiling, not looking for answers, just… staring. And that was the night I realized: no one was coming to save me.No miracle. No phone call. No perfect words.Just me. And a decision.A decision to either give up completely—or get back up and fight for a version of myself I had never met yet. One that didn't just survive but learned how to become bulletproof.But let me be honest—before I became stronger, I had to admit I was weak. Before I stood tall, I had to crawl. Before I had peace, I had to sit with my pain.