At some point in a recent therapy session, I made a passing comment. I said how nice it would be if this version of my life, the one I’ve been living in recent months, had arrived earlier. If only a younger me had tasted this kind of peace, this strength, and this sense of being more whole. I didn’t mean for it to be anything profound. But as always, my therapist caught what was worth sitting with a little longer.
I pictured life as a long strip of paper, stretching from birth until now. I imagined folding parts of it away, memories of childhood and the growing up years, the final few years of my previous corporate life, and parts of 2024. If I could just crease the timeline, and bring this version of myself forward a little earlier.
That was it. I wasn’t trying to rewrite life or image some grand, better future. I didn’t picture what could have been or how different things might look. I simply wanted to shift this version of life forward. That was as far as my thought went.
Nearly an hour into the session, my therapist face lit up, that unmistakable spark of arriving at a realisation. She clapped for herself, quite literally. A quiet certainty settled into the room. We had found it, the thing beneath the thing.
The moment she named it, it landed in me. It wasn’t really about wanting to simply bring this version of myself earlier. It was about wanting to bypass the pain. To skip the weight of watching people hurt me and walk away unscathed as if nothing happened. It was about the cruelty of the flipped script. The quiet exhaustion of being the one to do all the healing.
How lucky I am to have stepped off the path I was once on. To have come close to becoming someone I wouldn’t have recognised, and somehow, to be placed on this one instead.
That thought brought to mind a conversation I had a few weeks ago. It was unexpected, awkward at first because of the context, but slowly softening into something unexpectedly warm. We shared a kind of familiar energy. What stayed with me was the way she chose to live, open, unguarded, and willing to let go. We spoke about the dip before the rise, that inevitable low before something new begins to take shape. And how, when you’re in it, nothing makes sense. You can’t see how anything will get better but when the rise comes, it comes and it makes that initial dip worth it and necessary, even.
Earlier today, I found myself in another conversation, this time with someone I first met back in 2020. She used the same words about being open and about letting go. And again, I was reminded of the dip before the rise. When the rise comes, it brings with it a kind of clarity that makes the initial chaos before it feel, strangely, necessary. We caught up for a bit, and she reminded me of one of my dreams, one I had shelved for quite a while it almost stopped feeling like mine.
The past few months have been about rebuilding. They’ve also been about remembering, about making space for the dreams I had packed away quietly. Some of these dreams are beginning to unfold, others will take months, maybe years. And yet, they’re all beginning to take shape, not in isolation but with the help of people who have been around for years.
Maybe I just wasn’t ready to see them before.
It amazes me how these people are holding my dreams with me, nudging them back into sight, and bringing them to life.
My therapist said we’ll be working on a glitter bomb next session. I was stunned and had no idea what that meant.
Would we be returning to those memories, inviting glitter bombs into them. Tiny, shimmering explosions in the faces of those who have caused hurt and walked away. Would the glitter land on them like a mark, impossible to wash off, impossible to hide, so that wherever they go, they would carry visible evidence of what was done. Maybe then, there would be no need for further explanation, just recognition.
Or perhaps it’s something else. Maybe we’ll be making an actual glitter bomb, like kids, like joy, and like celebration. A moment of lightness for this version of self that has finally arrived.