SECURITY IN PRESENCE

​November 23rd, 2025

Today I was knocked upside the head with some wisdom. 

It’s related to a TikTok video I watched yesterday, in short, about how avoidant attachment style individuals are preoccupied with the past and their entire strategies are about avoiding past pain/shame from occurring again so they forego the present altogether. Interesting. 

Then she discussed how for Anxiously attached individuals, they live for the future in order to escape the anxiety of the present moment. Their entire strategy revolves around imagining the worst (or best) that could occur in hopes of changing that outcome in the present. Also interesting. 

I thought about how I’ve told myself in the past that I would try to be more present. How I tend to live on either side of time - but never the here and the now. It’s interesting because I notice both in me. 

It’s difficult to tolerate ambiguity when an unsavory outcome could devastate you completely. Maybe that’s giving too much of my power away to think that way. 

I suppose that is one of the ways in which I've been going wrong. 

By doing both things:

1. Self-soothing the discomfort of risk/ambiguity by projecting past fears/pains into the present. 

2. By not tolerating the discomfort of the present and instead choosing to soothe myself through fantasy of the future. 

Neither gives you a fighting chance. I'm no longer my childhood self, and I'm not yet my older self, so existing in either timeline is simply inappropriate. 

I'm living in the shoes of my younger self a lot these days (hence the fifteen recollections) - and it's hard to snap out of it. I'm still in that house if you will. I'm at risk I'm getting buried underneath the weight of it. I am constantly getting pulled back to these old memories whenever I try to lunge forward. I guess what I'm aiming for is the future I always envisioned for myself, which by all accounts should be the present. A lot has changed, and yet nothing changes - that's terrifying. 

I used to imagine losing the weight, looking how I do now, having the money I do now, and so on. Now I'm here and I just feel like a shell of myself. None of it has made my dreams come true.

My routines are out of whack for the day, but I'm going to let it be. It's too late in the day and too cold to try and fix it retroactively. 

I guess I have to keep in mind that security is rooted in the present (in presence). It's not found in scanning the past, if it successfully pulls you back, you're already too far gone. It's also not found in the future, none of that exists yet and conjuring it up in your mind isn't a guarantee it'll pan out that way either. 

I'm going to ponder on presence and what makes the present worth grounding into. 

- vetiveroil