I’m going through something right now.
It’s not the kind of something you can tie up in a punchline or smooth over with a filtered selfie and a good caption. It’s the kind of something that sits in your throat, too heavy to swallow, too stubborn to spit out. The kind that makes you want to cancel everything and also say yes to anything that might distract you from it. I filmed a video already; I talk more about it there. But I haven’t been ready to let it out in writing until now. Maybe not even now. Maybe this is just the pressure valve hissing open because I’ve been holding it in too long.
This morning I saw an image, just a throwaway post on someone’s story. One of those things you scroll past a hundred times a day. But it stopped me cold:
“No amount of regret changes the past. No amount of anxiety changes the future. But any amount of gratitude changes the present.”
I don’t believe in signs most days. I believe in algorithms, and caffeine dependency, and making the best of what’s rotting in the fridge. But this hit like a reminder I didn’t know I’d asked for. Like someone whispering through the noise, pay attention.
Because regret and anxiety are the monsters I know best. Regret follows me like a shadow. It creeps in after the conversation ends. After the silence stretches too long. After the decision is made. It sounds like, You should have known better. You should have done more. You should have seen this coming. It’s not just about the big moments either. It’s about all the tiny ones. The split seconds where I didn’t speak up. The days I didn’t take care of myself. The years I spent twisting myself into shapes to be more palatable, less much.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is loud. It doesn’t creep. It crashes. It’s that buzz under my skin, that hum in my brain that never quite lets me rest. It’s the panic of not knowing what comes next, and the certainty that it won’t be good. It makes me flinch at the future like it’s a fist about to swing. It whispers about failure and financial ruin and being forgotten. It tells me I’m running out of time. That I’ve already wasted too much.
So between those two, regret dragging behind me and anxiety pulling ahead, I rarely feel like I’m anywhere solid. Just suspended between what I can’t fix and what I can’t control.
And then there’s that last line:
“Any amount of gratitude changes the present.”
And I want to roll my eyes at it. I want to dismiss it like I do most platitudes. But I can’t. Because there’s something true in it, and truth doesn’t need to shout to be real.
Gratitude is quiet. It doesn’t erase anything. It doesn’t overwrite the damage or scrub out the scars. But it does anchor me, even if only for a second. It pulls me out of the loop. It gives me something to touch.
Right now. Not someday. Not what was. But this.
And the truth is, I haven’t been doing a good job of being here lately. I’ve been somewhere else entirely. I’ve been in the hospital room that still haunts me. I’ve been on the couch where I numbed out for months. I’ve been in the mirror, picking myself apart. I’ve been in the future, catastrophizing every possible path, convinced none of them end well.
But gratitude says, stop. Just for a moment.
Look around.
There’s a dog sleeping with her paw over her nose.
There’s hot coffee cooling too fast but still comforting.
There’s your body, still trying, still waking up every morning, even after you’ve cursed it and failed it and apologized to it and cursed it again.
There’s the ridiculous fact that in the middle of everything crumbling, someone still said “I love you” and meant it.
There’s breath. There’s sweat. There’s music.
There’s you. Still here.
And that doesn’t fix it. It doesn’t make the grief go away. It doesn’t make the money show up or the fear disappear or the trauma untangle itself. But it’s something. It’s a rope. And right now, that might be enough.
I don’t have a clean ending for this post. No tidy resolution. No three-step plan.
I’m still deep in it. Still clawing my way toward whatever the next version of me looks like.
But I’m grateful you’re here, reading this.
I’m grateful I have words, even when I don’t want to use them.
I’m grateful for the click of the keyboard and the low hum of the heater and the fact that, despite it all, I haven’t stopped showing up for myself, even in the smallest of ways.
That’s where I’m living right now. In the small. In the barely-there gratitude. In the tiny flickers of light that remind me I’m not done yet.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
xoxo
-S
P.S. – Dare I ask – should I create a shadow work series/workbook? What do you think?
Diet Coke and Hair-Spray 