Please Don't Tame Your Wildness

I wish it hadn’t happened to you.

When we were teens, the party followed wherever you went. You cared not for convention, you followed no trends. Instead, you set the trends. You defied the norms.

People changed around you. They became their better selves. Your magical energy transformed every space you entered. You were a ball of fire.

Your imagination was a magnet, your dreams mindblowing, your energy contagious, your personality an addictive drug.

You were hypnotic. How free you were in your body, your movements, your voice, your laughter! You were more wolf than human; more instinct than logic. You took risks. You stared authority down. And you sweetened them up as you did it.

I will never forget the long look we once shared and held across the room. Time stopped for me. That single moment shook something loose inside me, kindled the fire and intensity that lives inside me still today.

We weren’t in the same circles. We walked different life paths. But —you modeled for me what wildness looks and feels like.

Every time I sense myself getting beaten down and tamed by this world, every time I make the easy choice instead of the powerful one, every time I feel like I’m not living from my wildest and most creative essence—I remember the fire of intense passion you lit in me so long ago with just that single look.

I often dream of you —and in these dreams, you need only brush against my skin to reawaken my wildness. You need only give me a teasing smile, and I know you see how sometimes I hide my wildness beneath “proper” behavior. These dreams come to me when I am letting myself shrink to make others more comfortable. These dreams are like lighter fluid for me.

And so it breaks something inside me to see you tamed now. To hear you speak of normal things, to see you fit into polite conversation. Your energy is lassoed, the way mine once was. I see the mask, tempering the firepower of your gaze.

You’re no longer the kid riding a bike no-handed down the middle of the street, cutting through people’s lawns. You’re the adult standing on the sidewalk yelling at kids to get off your lawn.

You’re buttoned up, polished, neat and refined.

I can’t bear it.

This world beats and disappoints and dares us to not become bitter and angry. This world softens and tames so many of us. But I never imagined it could tame you.

So, let me do for you what you did for me years ago with a single look of fire. Let me catch you in my gaze, and remind you who you are, and where you came from.

You, my friend, are no earth-dweller. You are made of starstuff. You are pure passion and creative fire. You are not a follower and you’re not here to fit in. You are not even a leader— because leaders need followers and you have never needed anything from this world.

You are pure possibility.

You are unbridled power.

You cannot be classified, organized, packaged.

Your nature is wild; your presence a bolt of lightning.

Do not be tamed by this world. Remain the tangled, free-spirited, magical, spontaneous breath of life you’ve always been.

I see the wildness still behind your eyes and in your smile. Hidden a bit, behind the clouds of confusion and pain that strike all of us.

This is not simply nostalgia for the freedom of when we were kids. This isn’t me merely tiring of adult responsibilities. This is me remembering what you once helped me remember: we are made of fire and power and energy and none of that should be tamed or refined or buttoned up.

Let my words light the match, let me kindle your remembering.

Because it was you who first encouraged me, so long ago, to inhale my own wildness, let me now exhale it back to you.