The Law of Attraction

By Someone Still Trying to Get Free

There’s a kind of law at work between people, and it doesn’t live in any book or courthouse. It’s quieter than that, subtle, like a scent, like a half-remembered song. You only notice it once it’s already working. And by then, you’re in deep.

I’ve started calling it the law of attraction, though not in the sense people usually mean. I don’t mean "if I think it, it will come.” I mean the law that says:
“I am drawn to you because you seem free in a way I don’t believe I ever will be.”

It is a kind of gravity. A pull. Sometimes quiet, sometimes electric.
You meet someone and they laugh too loud in public, or they quit a job without fear, or they live out loud in a way you’ve never dared.
And something inside you says: That. That is the kind of freedom I want.
And it has very little to do with love, at least at first. It’s admiration with a heartbeat. A quiet longing wrapped in affection. Sometimes it grows into love. Sometimes it burns out. But it starts with that spark.

I have seen people stay in relationships long past their expiration date, not because they’re happy, and not because it’s healthy, but because the other person still feels like freedom.
Or rather, still carries the memory of it.
Sometimes we stay for the ghost of a feeling. Sometimes we stay because we’re still hoping that if we love them long enough, some of that freedom will rub off on us.

But here's what I’m starting to understand:
Freedom, real freedom, is never something you can borrow. It isn’t contagious. You have to make your own.
You can’t love someone into becoming your liberation. You can only love them if you’re also doing the work to free yourself.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the real attraction:
Not to people who are free,
but to people who remind us that freedom is possible.

Even for us.