If I Die, Bury me in the Douglas Basement
Illustration by Sydney Hanson
How do you walk off rock bottom? It’s a question that bounces around the walls of my mind like that old DVD logo that never quite hits the TV corner. The answer is never symmetrically satisfying, but the question—like the logo—is always there, always moving. My heavy footfalls thump down the stairs in tandem with my out of rhythm thoughts. Each descending step widens the distance between me and my above ground anxieties. Eventually I stop, four floors underground, at the door to the Douglas Basement. After settling myself into a dusty cubicle with a twitching light, I pull on an equally dusty thread of courage, open my laptop, and steel myself for a long road to academic recovery.
Like many others, I probably should have taken a gap year, or maybe a stronger SSRI. But like many others, I didn’t. I went to university wholly unprepared: immature, grovelling in self destruction, and feeding my bottomless need to escape with any vice necessary. Looking back, there was no big “wake up” moment that motivated me to turn my life around. There were many moments in fact that should have, but didn’t. Friends often ask me in quiet voices what my turning point was. The quietest ones are those who knew me when I wasn’t lucid. The truth is, when you’re stuck in a cycle you keep feeding, every attempt to leave begins with low expectations—and low expectations aren’t memorable. As a result, the attempt that stuck has slipped carelessly from my mind. All I remember is feeling blinded, my vision overwhelmed by a blockade of mess that I alone had to clean up. I was wiping down foggy windows in my mind, pitifully trying to clear the smoke until eventually my opponent relented, and finally I regained my sight. Most days, I would clamber down to the Douglas basement where I had no service and I’d carefully comb through every assignment and reading. The irony was never lost on me that I walked out of rock bottom by walking down to the basement each day. It became a dear habit for me.
With third year came the cool relief of stability, like pressing your sunburnt back against cold metal on a blistering day. Still, I maintained my pace and I returned to the basement. I chose the basement because it was isolating. I appreciated how dusty it was; to me that meant it was untouched. I didn’t realize how attached I had become to “my” study space until I stayed seated all throughout the noisy construction, and chatter. It was clear my fondness had morphed into irrational loyalty. I had developed an alliance with the basement of a second tier library. Perhaps it was stubbornness that pulled me back each day, and spite that dared me into becoming a fixture of the library. The drilling would start like clockwork every morning an hour after I started working. I knew it was their job to be there, but somehow, showing up became my responsibility too. I wasn’t paid for my presence. I wasn’t bound by contract or reward—only by an invisible, sustained promise I had made and I decided to honour.
An old swim coach was the first to tell me that it takes 28 days to build a new habit. This fact has been a buoy of faith that I have clung to these past years. A countdown to believe that if I just persist 27 days longer, I will be in the clear. The funny thing is that once that habit is established it’s hard to break. The Douglas Basement has become that new habit for me. I can’t study anywhere else. If I’m not there when I know I should be, I feel guilty—like I’m rain-checking on an old friend. I don’t call it toxic productivity because it isn’t. I always finish studying around 5pm and don’t feel guilty about not doing an assignment until the break of dawn.
Habits are not only sturdy but patient. They need no validation through limelight or gratuitous displays of strength. Walking off rock bottom is no free solo expedition, it is a long and patterned switch back climb. The elevation feels imperceptible because once you get used to walking back and forth within the same border of space, you feel like you have lost direction. You forget that you are slowly ascending. That is until, the fog begins to clear, and as you chance a look down, you realize.
You are no longer at the bottom.