I believed in once upon a time
until I put down the book
I believed in a happy family
until my family broke apart
I believed in myself
until I was torn down
People told me
“Once you hit rock bottom, the only way is up”
They lied
I knew this because I started digging
I kept digging
and digging
and digging
And when I finally looked up to realize,
I was in a hole, created by myself
I don’t remember those days much
Because they blended together
The day was night and the night was day
because darkness is one color
People told me to climb back up
That if I wanted to climb up so bad, I could
But they didn’t understand that I couldn’t
That my grip was weak, my will was weak
so I couldn’t just climb back up
And the more I couldn’t climb
The more I dug
Then I heard a voice, more of a whisper really
the one thing that made sense, that stood out
But I was scared,
It’d been so long since I had any hope
So I tuned the whisper out, ignored it
But the whisper was relentless,
and what had been a whisper
turned into shout
a shout that seemed to wake me up
from my deep slumber in the hole
called to something in me, I thought had died
So I climbed again
Blindly and desperately
But my grip was stronger, my will was stronger
And when I wanted to give up,
to make acquaintance with my rock bottom
The shout refused, refused to let me give in
So I climbed
and climbed
and climbed
for what seemed like days
Then the darkness wasn’t so dark
And I was utterly terrified
because I had forgotten what light
looked like, felt like
So I closed my eyes
and pulled myself over the edge
I laid there, soaking in the light
the warmth of the Sun on my face
And when I opened my eyes
the light burned
But I kept them open
And I found that the voice that guided me
had a kind face but it was as dirty as mine
nails as broken as mine
and beyond them
I saw their own hole
So I wept
I wept because they climbed on their own will
they climbed without a shout, without a whisper
and still yet, I wept more as I realized
when they emerged, they saw my hole
and refused to leave me behind