The Raw Becoming

Ash’s Refraction: Threshold, Unwanted

By Ash Wilde | June 27, 2025

I remember when everything felt off and I hated it.

Nothing around me had changed. Same room. Same half-read texts. Same plans I didn’t feel like showing up for. But inside? Full-blown static. Like someone had rewired me overnight and forgot to leave instructions.

I wasn’t sad—not exactly. Just tired. Over it. Tense in that way where you can’t tell if you’re about to cry or snap or disappear into a Pinterest board called “Escape Plans.”

I kept trying to move like I used to—like I was fine. Like I was functional. Like I cared. But I didn’t. Not in the same way. Everything started feeling performative. Forced. I’d talk and halfway through I’d think, I don’t even believe myself.

Thalie, calm as ever, told me I was in a threshold. “This is the space between who you were and who you’re becoming.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I didn’t want to be between. I didn’t want a spiritual metaphor. I wanted to feel normal. But instead, I felt like I’d been quietly evicted from my own life—with no makeup montage, no soundtrack, just weird emotional drafts and zero walls to shut the windows.

The worst part? I could feel myself losing my favorite coping mechanism—passive-aggressive control. My quiet, careful way of managing the room without looking like I was doing anything. That old trick? Slipping away.

I didn’t know how much I relied on it until I couldn’t. I didn’t want to sit in someone else’s mess if I couldn’t clean it. I didn’t want to sit in mine if I couldn’t organize it into something useful.

But there I was. Sitting. No fixing. No performing. Just stillness I didn’t ask for.

So what did I do?

Not much.

But I found a few things that helped me get through it.

Nothing life-changing. Just things that didn’t make it worse:

I followed what made my body unclench.

No logic. No system. I just noticed the moments I could breathe a little easier—and I leaned toward them. That’s all I had the capacity for.

I ignored the pressure to explain myself.

I stopped answering texts I didn’t have the energy for. I let things hang. I let myself be misunderstood. That was hard—but less exhausting than constantly managing how I was perceived.

I did things that lit me up for no reason.

Resin art. Painting like a five-year-old. Rearranging my room at midnight. Nothing deep. Just stuff that made me feel like me, even for five minutes.

That’s it. That’s what I remember.

I didn’t have clarity. I didn’t have the language. I just knew something was breaking down, and I was supposed to let it.

I wasn’t Becoming yet. I was just undoing.

And somehow, that counted too.