Lion Tamer

I am not a lion tamer.

I was not born to subdue the untamable, nor to reduce the wild nature of those who became fierce in the world.

Life, yes, taught me to rise with an invisible whip in my hands… not to wound, but to endure.

I used it against the days when I almost lost myself, against the fears that tightened my chest, against the temptation to give up on myself.

But that whip… I do not raise it in love.

In love, I lay down my weapons.

Because loving is not winning, nor leading, nor bending another’s will.

To love is to accept that some hearts move with the wind, carry fire in their depths, roar when they sense threat—even where there is tenderness.

And you… are like that.

I cannot be the hand that tames you.

Nor do I want to be the cage where you fall asleep from exhaustion.

I can be shelter, if you wish.

I can be silence where you rest your roar.

I can be the one who looks you in the eyes without fear, recognizing your strength and loving it without trying to diminish it.

But I cannot hold you.

I cannot expect you to trade wilderness for safety, impulse for predictability, freedom for constancy.

So today… without pain, without drama, without farewell…I release you from the invisible bonds that perhaps, without realizing it, I placed around you.

Not so that you leave.

But so that you choose, in full wholeness, to stay.

So that if there is love in you, it does not come from the fear of losing me, but from the freedom of wanting me.

I want you to be free.

Free of me, of us, of the ideas of what we should be.

Free to live love in its purest form, whether by my side or anywhere else where you feel whole.

Because I learned that to love, truly, is not to want to bind.

It is to open the door and say: “Fly, run, leave — or return. But come because you want to.”

And if one day you choose this place as your home, may it be with your roar intact and not with your spirit silenced.