Prima Materia: The Alchemy of Presence
Song: Taro by Alt-J
When you know someone no longer has access to you, something shifts. You stop rehearsing conversations in your head. You stop editing your feelings to make them acceptable, or shrinking your truth in case they reappear. You no longer withhold your emotions out of fear — fear that they will come back just as you begin to heal. When you are permanently done, you no longer perform to keep that fantasy alive.
You stop living in anticipation — no longer waiting for their return, finally choosing not to romanticize the almost.
When someone no longer has the power to do anything to you — or to vanish at the first sight of your humanity — you reclaim yourself completely. You take back your emotional safety. You stop editing your feelings to keep someone comfortable, and slowly, you stop avoiding the places that once carried their absence. You start walking into places you once shared with them — not because you expect to find them there, and not because you are trying to relive anything, but because what once felt shared now feels like something you are learning to hold on your own.
Slowly, almost without noticing, you begin to separate the place from the person. The song becomes just a song again. Not in a way that erases what they once meant, but in a way that gives those things back to you. Your brain learns a new association: the café exists without them, and the song can be heard without them. People may enter and leave, and they may change your direction momentarily, but they do not carry your destiny with them when they go. So the song is yours again.
When someone tries to recreate your journey, they are not actually retracing it — they are copying the surface of something that was built under entirely different conditions. The decisions never land the same, the opportunities never appear in the same way, and the meaning behind it all never carries over. What worked for one person belonged to who they were, where they stood, and what they were meant to move through.
There is a truth in transformation that is not spoken about enough: not all healing can be witnessed, and not all of it can be shared in real time.
Not because people are doing something wrong. Healing — especially when it involves a past that still reaches for you — requires undivided attention. When someone else is there, your awareness can split. Part of you is with the memory, trying to name it, understand it, stay present with it. Another part of you is tracking them — how they are reacting, whether they understand, whether you are being too much, whether you need to explain, soften, or translate your experience into something more digestible.
When another person is present, there is often an unconscious pull to resolve things more quickly — to package the experience into something shareable, something that makes sense externally. You might reach for reassurance instead of sitting with the discomfort, letting the truth exist in its unrefined form. But transformation often requires solitude — not as isolation, but as containment. A space where nothing needs to be explained. A space where you can let the past rise exactly as it is — messy and unresolved —and meet it without interruption.
This becomes even more important when you are in the in-between — when the past is still holding on, even as you are learning to let go. If someone steps too far into that process, even with care, it can blur the boundary between what belongs to you and what belongs to them. Their comfort, their interpretations, their desire to help — it can all unintentionally anchor you back into dynamics you are trying to move beyond.
Sometimes, you have to turn inward and do the work alone.
Not because your partner and people are not important, or because the relationship lacks depth, but because this part of the journey is yours. It is where you learn that you can sit with your own mind without being overtaken by it. That you can face what resurfaces without needing to hand it to someone else to hold for you.
When you return, you are no longer searching for external resolution. You bring something that has already begun to transform within you. That allows your partner to meet you more clearly — not as someone responsible for fixing your past, but as someone who can witness who you are becoming beyond it.
As a former teacher and a mother who taught my children in their early years, I have always held a deep love for Where the Wild Things Are. If you look at it through the lens of alchemy, it becomes less a children’s book and more a map of emotional transformation. Max does not just leave his room— he enters a psychological realm made of unprocessed feelings. His anger, his defiance, his desire to be powerful and seen all take form. These creatures are not random; they are exaggerated, untamed parts of himself— the prima materia, the chaotic substance that must be confronted before it can be transformed.
When Max declares himself king, he does not suppress the wildness — he joins it. He lets it expand, lets it dance, lets it roar. This mirrors a crucial stage: you do not transcend something by avoiding it; you enter it fully. In the midst of that chaos, Max begins to feel something deeper — loneliness. A longing not just for attention, but to be where someone loved him best of all. He realizes that even intensity, power, and control never fills that emptiness.
At the end of the story, Max returns home, leaving behind the kingdom he ruled. He does not destroy his wildness — he integrates it. The sailboat becomes a symbol of this journey, carrying him from chaos back to connection. He learns that home is not just a place, but a space where he can be fully himself, because presence is more than a feeling — it is the ability to notice what is happening within and around you without being consumed by it. It teaches you how to love someone without losing yourself.
This is the deeper lesson: life does not owe you anything. It moves, changes, and sometimes takes things with it. You stop waiting for people to become who they have shown you they are not because potential is not a promise. And then comes the harder truth: some people do not go deeper. They choose comfort over reflection, ego over accountability, performance over honesty. A wannabe performs growth without doing the work. They want recognition without transformation. And when they encounter someone who has done the work, it creates tension — not because you have done anything wrong, but because your presence exposes the gap.
Perhaps that is the deepest form of love we learn — not just how to come home to ourselves, but how to let go of who we used to be and what we have carried for so long.
I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. — Revelation 3:18
Revelation 3:18 deals with inner transformation through refining processes.
Spiritual purification through trials. Transforming inner obstacles into higher awareness.
Righteousness and spiritual integrity by living authentically and shedding false identities.
Gaining spiritual insight, awakening to present-moment awareness and understanding by His word.
Becoming rich spiritually by becoming fully present and spiritually alive.