Love We're Too Scared to Claim

Today, I sat down to write—really write. Not daily texts, meeting a publisher’s deadline, or racing the relentless tick-tock of expectation. Today, I’m writing purely for myself. Exactly like I used to 15 years ago, when Tumblr and styrofoam coffee was my confessional booth. And the blinking cursor was an invitation rather than an obligation.

Now it's just me, an extra-hot cappuccino—because Koreans prefer their drinks scalding—and my endlessly spinning thoughts.

I’m in Koreatown, literally punching keys, retracing my steps through the same neighborhood that first nudged me toward rebirth. Koreatown is noisy, messy, brilliantly alive—a tiny universe made up of contradictions, much like my old life.

Being back here today, I can feel the differences under my feet, the subtle proof that maybe, just maybe, I have returned from my hero's journey. Maybe even slayed some dragons. But something rings that hasn't before. My gaze drifts further east, toward Korea itself. Seoul—the city where I took my first breath but have never revisited since infancy—is calling me home, ironically when I have lost mine, and for the first time in 52 years, I’m ready for a different return. One I have anticipated since love chopped me at the knees.

Love.

For 15 years, I’ve studied it—poked it, prodded it, pulled it apart, and tried to stitch it back together. Many believe I teach love, but the truth is I'll always be a student to it. Lately, it's been lingering on my mind in ways both restless and new. Not the syrupy, Hallmark-card version, nor the feverish, Romeo-and-Juliet injection we mistake for love. And definitely not the strategic comforts of compatibility—agreements lined with fear and dressed up as romance.

No, I’m talking about something entirely different: unpossessive love, a concept I have felt called to obsession with lately.

Let me clarify: I'm not talking about nonmonogamy, polyamory, or any other trendy relationship status lighting up your Instagram feed. Instead, it reaches beyond labels, beyond formats, into something radical and profoundly human—loving without ownership. It's releasing our white-knuckled grip on others, on outcomes, on our desperate illusions of control, and daring to love freely, deeply, without the expectation of permanence or even reciprocation. Because even reciprocation is loaded. Yes, self-love and a deserving of a type of love that you finally believe you deserve. But deserving and demanding is a very fine line I have learned.

Right now, I stand at a strange intersection in life. My house is gone, my age tips beyond the neat threshold of "midlife," and I find myself exploring the altered states, mostly a new felt experience in a groundedness even a motorcycle could never give me—MDMA, this medicine that feels both ancient and entirely futuristic. It's as if I'm standing at the edge of an unfamiliar ocean, toes in the sand, feeling waves crash uncertainly around my feet. Each loss, each revelation reshapes the shoreline of my understanding.

And so, I ask myself, what exactly does unpossessive love look like?

It looks like allowing those we care for deeply to exist fully as themselves—even when their choices lead them away from us. It’s love without subtle manipulation masquerading as concern, without the chains of hidden expectations. It’s the radical ability to celebrate someone else’s happiness, even if their happiness has nothing to do with us.

Unpossessive love means genuinely rooting for another person's joy, even if we're not the source of it. It demands courage—the courage to stay open-hearted, vulnerable, and present—aware we hold no claim on tomorrow, no guarantee beyond this exact moment.

It also means letting go of the pressure to be someone else's "everything." Each of us is simply too vast, too beautifully complicated, to be neatly folded into another person’s demands or desires. Love without ownership means inhaling freedom, exhaling gratitude, recognizing that real love, at its core, is neither tethered nor transactional.

When our home went up in flames, it clarified the futility of clinging—to material possessions, to security, even to relationships—as if permanence was ever possible. The universe has a dark sense of humor, offering lessons often brutal yet strangely liberating. Losing everything forces us to realize that holding loosely, paradoxically, gives us the firmest grasp on peace.

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Turning 52 reinforces this wisdom: Love deeply, love courageously, but hold gently. Because the hands that clutch too tightly will bruise the very thing they're desperate to keep safe.

Perhaps the most profound lesson has come from the cautious, therapeutic embrace of that medicine, which loosened the rusted hinges of my fears, opened my heart wider, and showed me clearly that love isn't ownership—it’s co-creation, shared moments, mutual witnessing. Simple to say, yet excruciatingly difficult to practice, especially for those of us carrying histories filled with wounds and protective walls.

And so here I sit today, in Koreatown, steam insistently rising from my too-hot cup, Seoul softly whispering my name across the ocean. Today, I'm redefining love—not as something we hold tightly, but something we behold gently. With two hands. Not as a possession, but as presence itself.

Because perhaps, at our deepest core, isn’t this exactly the love we've always craved but were too terrified to claim?