{Warning: naughty language ahead!}

I never knew what people meant by “non-attachment.”

I understand the concept. I’ve been practicing yoga for 11 years. I am pretty good at the thinking and the stuff. But the application?

I am attached as fuck. I love my family. When they die, as some of them have, I grieve. When I hurt, I feel—intensely. When I am wounded, my very heart is rendered in many pieces, because I love, deeply, sincerely and authentically.

I am attached.

And then I begin to fall (or rise) in love.

Like, for real.

Not to say that I don’t love my family, or that I haven’t loved before. Of course I have done both.

But this.

Love, it turns out, is freedom. By letting each other be free, we can be completely each other’s. Because we are not bound, or tied, or coerced, we can remember the important parts.

Like, this is the person that is most important in the world for me.

Not perfect in their actions, or in their looks, or in their beliefs. Perfect in the way they fit, the way our bodies rest together, the way our words flow like an easy morning, and the way we make each other want to be full—not better, because we are better, separately, and together.

But more—full of joy, and life, and searching for the things that will bring us all of it, because now that we have found that, life can be so incredibly vivid; we are eager and desperate and cannot wait to find the million things that will make us more alive, now that we have found how deeply we can breathe. We can see that there are in fact no limits, and we laugh that we ever thought that there were, and smile because, you are free and I am free, and we are free to be.

We choose to be.

In freedom, we choose everything.

And in freedom, his happiness is vital, and it is my responsibility to equate it with my own.

And, that may not always mean that I am a part of that equation.

And that’s okay.

For me, that is why it feels so incredible to love, and to know that I am loved.

Because we are free.

My romantic heart wants to believe in the One, and perhaps there is a One—a perfect soul-fit, a One that when our souls meet we exhale happy sighs of greeting, of finally, of what took you so long? of it’s been forever, but only yesterday, and always and often have I dreamed of your sweet face.

But I think there are probably many Ones. Many soul-fits. Because our souls are old and the universes are many, lifetimes without number and, dearest, I know I have known you before. I have known your touch, and falling for you has been a forgetting to remember, or is it a remembering to forget, because we fit like fate and we play like buddies and we fuck like long separated lovers, laughing and delighted and ravenous to touch, to taste, because it has been a lifetime and only a day since I held you before.

And yes, I will let you go.

I will let you go, because, like our many soul-fits, we will find each other again.

If it means that you will be happier, or that your life will be richer, or that you will reach for a moonbeam and land on an impossible star, I will cheer you on.

Because love sets us free.

And I will know you again, soul-fit.

It may be forever, or it may be a day.

But we will smile, on the inside, and exhale into each other’s necks, and our hearts will beat of adventure and our mouths will smile joy, because we have come together again, carried by warm winds and singing songs too joyful and mournful for mouths to sing or for ears to hear.

And if we do not?

If somewhere, the universe carries you away, or I take a wrong turn in a dream?

Nothing changes.

I will have let you go, freely.

I never owned you.

You were never mine.

But we are part of the same, soul-fit.

We came from the same, and, some day, we will return to the same.

We all do.

Where that is, I am not quite sure yet (but if you get there first, save me a seat).

I do know that to bind you or tie you or try to own you would be to minimize, to even kill, something in you that is vital, and human, and that soars and sings and lets me stay free and be yours, that keeps you free and wild and asks for nothing but gives everything.

The moment someone tries to own us is the moment we become something else, other than what was sought, and desired. And loved.

So do not own me, soul-fit, and I will not own you. Let’s be free, and let’s choose how that looks, and wherever it takes us, let’s choose happiness, for ourselves, and for each other.

Non-attachment. It does not mean not caring. It means (among other things) caring so deeply that we equate that person’s happiness with our own. And we honor their freedom.

When we find our soul-fit, or our soul-fits, we are not bound, and it is not perfect, and it is not about sacrifice, or begging, or turning into something we are not.

It is not even about work, really.

It is about finding freedom, in love.

Are you free? Do you allow your partner freedom? To build, to find their happiness, their life, to let you build and find yours?

To create happiness, and a life together?

To disagree, to lose, to win.

Can we, our egos, allow freedom to let them leave us, if that means their ultimate happiness?

Real love is freedom from attachment.

And when it’s real love, it turns out, that doesn’t hurt.

When it’s real love, it turns out, that sets us free.

This is the fourth article in the series. Read the first, second, and third, and thanks for being part of the ride.

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Editor: Travis May

Photo: Joy/Pixoto, De Pauw/Pixoto