After another two-week period of pain and agony, the long-awaited, redeeming rain finally arrived. Since that, I am walking above the clouds, while I haven’t fully understood what happened to me yet. In one moment, burning happiness wants to blow my mind, and I have to hold myself back not to start singing and dancing in the middle of the office. In other moments, I am trembling anxiously from the massive doses of uncontrollable vitality and joy trying to break out of my body. I am going back and forth from one extreme state to the other. My body can’t digest the new experience and the new feelings yet.

Looking back on these days and on other similar experiences from my last years, I can clearly see a pattern that repeats itself over and over again: the characteristic waves of change, with their five stages.

1) Slow Road to Hell

I hit the road on a collision course. Something sets me off on a path marked by pain and suffering. Something significant that happens to me. Or something seemingly insignificant or unnoticed, that I can only see in hindsight. Or nothing happens at all, I still start drifting away somewhere deep. Maybe something in my unconscious decides that I am ready for the next round, to understand and fight the next piece of my baggage. Intensive feelings start weighing on me and torturing my soul. I can’t understand them yet. I can’t see into them. They are way too dark and opaque.

There were times when I became desperate and helpless when I found myself in such storm of feelings. I wanted to run away. I started fighting, but all my efforts were futile. As if I wanted to escape from a swamp by flapping my arms insanely, while I sink deeper and deeper in the mud. Other times I gave it all up and let the pain eat me up alive.

But lately, I don’t want to run away anymore, and I don’t surrender to it either. Instead, I try to listen because I’ve learned that I can find pure gold in the depth of my despair. While the tormenting pain is increasing day by day, its nature is sketching only gradually, and only if I am steadfast and lucky enough.

2) Agony at the Bottom

Then slowly but certainly, I reach the point where I can’t imagine any place worse and deeper. The bottom. I feel torturing anxiety, sadness or anger, that cuts into my muscles and bones, but still hasn’t manifested clearly. The feeling doesn’t let me live my life. It fills my mind and body. It is with me every single moment. Even pure existence is painful, let alone living an everyday life. At this point, it is so easy to lose my faith, no matter what I’ve learned several times before: the brightest of lights are waiting for me at the back of these dark tunnels. But I don’t believe it this time. I am restless and terrified. Everything loses its meaning. I can hardly get out of bed in the morning. Doing anything is painful. I have no appetite, and I can barely sleep at night.

3) Something Happens

And when everything seems beyond hope, and my life starts falling apart, if I still keep going, even without believing in any purpose, then something happens. Something that I’ve been craving so desperately.

I can’t force it, I’ve learned it so many times. If I push too hard, it never comes. I can only wait patiently with an open heart and keep going forward with hope that it comes at some point. Sure enough, sometimes it doesn’t come. Sometimes it doesn’t have its time yet. This is the worst part when I did all the work, all the suffering, and in the end, no salvation is coming to my rescue, and I have to drag myself out of my misery with force to be able to continue my life.

But if I am lucky, the miracle arrives, in the most unexpected moments and shapes. A dream, a memory, a realization, a movie, a song, a book, poem, a meditation, a hypnosis, a single word or gesture from a friend or a stranger, a loving hug, or something else. Something that changes everything. Something that brings to surface the shapeless, killing feeling and launches the explosion of a volcano. A wild, elemental, monstrous explosion of decade-long repressed anger that expresses itself like a wild beast breaking out of his cage. Or touching a repressed trauma, sorrow or grief for the first time, and giving a painful and liberating channel to the locked-up river of its tears. Or the fulfillment of a secret desire that never seemed possible or deserved. An incredible, shocking, cathartic, orgasmic, ground-breaking, undescribable experience that makes me feel I was overrun by a road-roller, and I still came out alive, in fact feeling better than ever.

4) Catharsis and Euphoria

After the explosion, everything turns upside down, and I don’t know where I am for hours or for days. Soon, the unbreakable feeling of euphoria hits me, that lasts for days or even weeks. But I already know that the world has changed permanently around me. This is another world, a much better and more beautiful new one, and it is never going to be the same old one that I’ve lived in for decades. The old one came to an end and never going to return. From that cathartic moment, even I am another person, not the one I used to be. Everything gets a new meaning. A new world full of new possibilities, with the promise of a new, happier life.

5) Getting Back to Normal

After a few days or rather weeks, everything goes back to normal. The euphoria fades away, some elements of the old world hits back in, and I realize that the world didn’t change completely at one blow. Some of the old feelings greet me again, and I see that although my baggage became significantly smaller and lighter, it still has considerable weight. But something has definitely changed forever. I returned somewhere, but not exactly where I was a couple of days earlier. I am not an entirely different person, but I am certainly different. The world hasn’t changed fully, but it has changed in some ways indeed. Something has changed fundamentally and beyond recall. The baseline, the balance shifted a little, one step higher than before. I’ve become happier and freer. But at the same time, I can see that the road is still long ahead. It is a sobering disappointment, but on the other hand, what would be the point if there wasn’t any road to walk further…