I don’t think there’s anything worse than hitting rock bottom. For me personally, it signified the pinnacle of failure.
The type that keeps you down for a long time, pondering your missteps and how you got there. Depression sets in, you become morose, life sucks.
This is a true story about someone I know who hit rock bottom. To protect his privacy, we’ll call him Denzel. Denzel is from Hyde Park, Southside Chicago.
He was fortunate to see the affluence of the University of Chicago (a top-10 ranked national university) and the tyranny of bordering neighborhoods such as Englewood (where the unemployment rate is 20 percent). This gave him both book and street smarts, a rare combination — but necessary for any African American male to survive in this world.
One night, Denzel found himself in the incredibly wealthy North Shore suburb of Winnetka, about 20 miles from downtown Chicago. His date resided in the area and wanted to impress him with its affluence. An attractive male, he’s no stranger to women.
After an impressive home-cooked meal consisting of chicken cacciatore, a chef’s salad, Pinot Grigio, and chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert, Denzel and his Caucasian suitor did the deed — they had sex.
He left her place in the wee hours of the morning, flabbergasted in the best way possible.
When he got to his car, he realized he didn’t have his keys on him. One glance inside the driver’s side window and he saw them — they were in one of his cupholders. His phone was dead, so he decided to try to break inside, busting that very window.
What he didn’t realize was he was being watched by a few overzealous neighbors. You know how this goes. A black man is observed allegedly committing a crime.
The police were called, showed up brandishing their weapons, told him to freeze, and arrested him on the spot.
He was charged with felony damage to property over $500, resisting a peace officer, and auto burglary (never mind the fact that the car was his).
After a lengthy court battle with a defense attorney possessing lukewarm talent at best, he was sentenced to two years with the possibility of parole — his clean record ended up cutting his sentence down considerably.
Life was never the same for him after that.
Coming back home was the biggest challenge Denzel faced. Even though his sentence wasn’t that long, the world continued moving and advancing without him, making him feel incredibly out of place.
He had no family or partner to return to, no money to his name, and no job prospects. He didn’t even have a car.
The jobs he qualified for were all mundane hourly positions working in warehouses, serving at late-night restaurants and diners, and temp work. Gone were the days of six-figure base salaries with stock options, signing bonuses, and performance bonuses.
Because of this, he ended up living check to check, struggling to get back on his feet. Desperate, desolate, and depressed from the grind, he turned to chasing women to avoid dealing with the crushing weight that represented his bleak circumstances. That was one thing he was always good at.
One night, while out at a bar, he met a woman who he immediately hit it off with. Conversation flowed throughout the evening and into the morning the way it does when you know you have a chance at a hooking up with the person. A ladies’ man, Denzel jumped at the opportunity.
He never tried to stay in contact with her afterward. That was standard protocol.
A few months later, he got a two-word text that completely changed the course of his life.
“I’m pregnant.”
He wished he deleted her number.
He was 28 when he got that text. Life was already more difficult than he thought it would be for him. Now, he had a woman he didn’t know well and a future child to think about as she told him she wanted to keep it.
Despite his best efforts to find a better paying job, the roles he qualified for didn’t amount to much of a pay increase. He still was a felon with a record that couldn’t be expunged or sealed — he lacked the money to do either.
Denzel was forced to take on a grueling, third-shift hourly role as a forklift driver, moving all kinds of freight for 50 hours a week. Overtime was mandatory and pushed his weeks to 65+ hours.
He hardly saw his partner and their son because of his work schedule. They fought daily about him being present. A vindictive woman, she ended up moving out with their child, refusing to allow Denzel to see his son unless he quit his job. He chose his job. How would he spend his time without it?
In the end, he started caring more about pleasure than anything else, having been thoroughly broken by his life experiences. So, he started calling himself a proud hedonist. Alcohol and drug use took over his life, turning him into a turbulent, unstable man.
He hit rock bottom and allowed it to break him in the worst way possible.
Hitting rock bottom fundamentally changes you as a person. You reach a monumental breaking point.
For some, that point is a mid-life crisis. For others, it’s a quarter-life crisis. For others yet, it can be a string of bad luck that reaches an unfortunate climax (as was the case in my situation).
We all go through it. You either embrace it and emerge better than ever, having learned from those dark days — or, like was the case with Denzel, you allow it to break you into millions of shards, becoming a shell of a person.
That’s how bitterness, cruelty, and negative thinking begin to set in, ultimately becoming the default ways you express yourself.
It can be challenging to use hitting rock bottom to one’s advantage. When I was there — homeless, unemployed, with convictions on my record and no one to turn to, the first thing I did that made a difference was research celebrities I looked up to who’ve also been down on their luck.
I wanted to see what they went through and how they survived. The results surprised me.
Bill Burr, the well-known actor, comedian, and podcaster, was a dishwasher at a restaurant before his big break.
J. Cole, the globally renowned recording artist, was homeless chasing his dream of becoming a rapper. He had to sleep in his car at one point while residing in New York, a long way from his hometown of Fayetteville, NC.
Kevin Hart, the internationally recognized stand-up comedian, actor, and serial entrepreneur, was forced to take on a shoe salesman position while living in Philadelphia just to make ends meet.
Lil Baby, a rapidly rising rapper and songwriter, was a felon and served time in a federal penitentiary before becoming a Billboard top-charting artist with several platinum and gold hits to his name, accumulated in a very short span.
This taught me that hitting rock bottom is part of the universal human condition. With that mental shift, I began to look at my trials as a badge of honor — but only if I survived them — because of the added perspective and experience they’d provide me.
It’s hard to see anything as positive when, like me, you find yourself newly released from jail, with no income, job, car, housing, or connections to any of these resources.
Still, I did my due diligence to look for the good, trying to take on a glass half full mentality. I ended up unearthing a wealth of positives. For instance, being homeless taught me to approach housing with a minimalist mindset. Nowadays, I embrace “simplistic luxury,” or nice furnishings that don’t break the bank.
In short, I’m living beneath my means rather than on par or above them. Now I have less angst when it comes to finances, money, and anything pecuniary in nature.
Sometimes, you’ll only be able to see the good in the aftermath of hitting rock bottom. Don’t let that deter you from using it to your advantage.
Having a hard time finding the good? If nothing else, ask yourself — “What can I learn from this experience/situation? The more you learn, the broader your wealth of experiences are. The broader those experiences are, the more knowledge you accumulate and retain. The more knowledge you retain, the more intelligent you become.
Smart people make it a point to learn from the good AND bad. Why? Because bad experiences are just as important, if not more important, than the good ones.
After all, a wise man once said, “Criticism is worth more than compliments.”
Another wise man, the media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk, spoke at length about why he doesn’t respond to positive comments or remarks emotionally.
To him, only embracing the good comments conditions people to only want to receive those types of comments, ignoring any they consider bad or negative in the process.
Without the bad or negative, we lose access to constructive criticism, the type that usually paves the way to lasting improvements. That’s why it’s imperative to look at both objectively and without emotion, but with logic.
Simply put, I became less materialistic. Losing close to $50,000 worth of high-end possessions (name-brand furniture, high fashion attire, artwork, etc.) taught me about the importance of frugality.
I learned to appreciate the simpler things in life. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true. Instead of devoting my life to making as much money as possible (especially after those robberies), I’m focused on the quality of my relationships and my overall satisfaction with the person I am.
As mentioned earlier, I also care more about financial frugality. Once upon a time, I’d use copious amounts of expendable income to purchase high-end products, leaving little in savings. I was keeping up with the Jones’ in my respective tax bracket, and it felt good for a while.
In reality, that lifestyle led to many sleepless nights suffering from buyer’s remorse, wondering if my most recent acquisitions were the purchase that would set me back — or wondering if some unforeseen expense would cause me to venture back to Nordstrom, head down in embarrassment, to return my latest pick up.
Nowadays, I live below my means; this has made it possible for me to save more and live better.
Lastly, I express gratitude for what I have daily. I know what it’s like to have nothing but the clothes on my back and the contents of my travel backpack. I know what it’s like to sleep in a parking garage in the middle of Winter, praying to wake up the next morning without frostbite. I know what it’s like to fake injuries — just so I could have a place to sleep and free food in a cozy hospital.
Being there will make you appreciate a warm bed (that you call your own), central air, a smart TV, books, and other simple pleasures with a renewed vigor, the type typical of joyful, ignorant, unbiased children.
The added perspective I’ve gained from surviving what felt like the insurmountable is what I’m most grateful for. I’m smarter, stronger, and wiser as a result.
I know what it’s like to hit rock bottom and emerge better from it. But only because I chose to “mine my experiences” for what I could gain from them — the good, bad, and ugly ones — without prejudice or emotion.
What will you uncover when you do the same?
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Paul Marsh's work on Medium.