Fire has always felt like a metaphor for the way I move through my own heart. I think about how easily it can mesmerize you—one second it’s warm and glow, the next it’s smoke in your lungs. That’s what emotional risk feels like to me. They’re the moments where I lean too close, my chest open, wondering if this will be the time I’m warmed or the time I walk away burned.
I’ve always been pulled toward intensity, maybe even addicted to it. The stillness of safety bores me in a way I don’t always like to admit. I want to feel alive in the way fire makes you alive—heat against your skin, oxygen rushing quicker, knowing the moment could turn dangerous but staying anyway. That’s what it feels like when I love someone too much, when I say the thing I shouldn’t, when I expose a part of myself I usually keep tucked away.
The first time I told someone “I love you” without knowing it would be returned, I thought my chest might cave in. My throat was dry, my voice almost childlike in its tremble. It was one of those sentences you can’t take back once it escapes. The pause that followed burned more than any rejection could. But I survived it. My heart felt like it had walked barefoot over coals, but I learned something that day: silence doesn’t kill you. Fear doesn’t kill you. What kills you is swallowing the words and never letting them see daylight.
I’ve been burned in bigger ways too. Loving someone who could not or would not love me back the way I needed. Staying in situations long after the smoke alarms in my body has been screaming. That kind of fire doesn’t just singe; it consumes, leaves you sifting through ash wondering how you’ll rebuild. For years, I carried the scorch marks of those choices, convinced that if I risked again, I’d simply be setting myself up to burn. But here’s what I’ve realized: the fire only takes what needs to go. The parts of me that turned to ash were the parts clinging to illusions, the parts that confused survival for love.
Even now, in the quieter, safer chapters of my life, I still feel the lure of the flame. It shows up in smaller risks: telling the truth about what I want in bed instead of settling for silence, admitting when I’m overwhelmed as a mother instead of pretending I can do it all, asking my partner to meet me in places of tenderness I used to be too afraid to name. These aren’t wild leaps, but they still carry that same fear: What if I’m too much? What if they turn away? What if my honesty costs me live instead of deepening it? And yet, each time I dare to lean in, I realize the fire isn’t out to destroy me. It wants to forge me.
Some days, the risk looks like choosing softness when hardness feels safer. It’s easier to shut down, to wear sarcasm like armor, to convince myself that needing less makes me stronger. But fire doesn’t live in walls—it lives in openings. The warmth only touches you if you get close enough, if you let your guard down, if you trust that maybe this time it will glow instead of sear.
I used to think the burns would define me, but what really defines me are the moments I leaned in despite them. The nights I confessed feelings I could barely name. The mornings I picked myself up after heartbreak and said, I’ll risk again. The times I showed my child the cracks in me instead of pretending I was unbreakable, so he’d know that being human doesn’t mean being flawless.
Playing with fire isn’t about recklessness. It’s not about running straight into the flames without thought. It’s about discerning which sparks are worth chasing and which fires are just smoke. It’s about understanding that to feel deeply is always a gamble, but it’s the gamble that makes us feel human.
Yes, I’ve been burned. But I’ve also been warmed in ways that saved me. The tenderness of someone who held my vulnerability instead of dropping it. The intimacy of sharing my darkest fears and watching someone stay anyway. The quiet victories of taking chances on myself—starting something I wasn’t sure I’d finish, stepping into a dream I was too shy to name, writing words I thought might never be read. Each of those risks felt like fire on my skin, terrifying and alive, and each one left me more myself than before.
The truth is, regret smolders longer than burns. I don’t regret the times I risked and lost—I regret the times I let fear make the choices for me. I regret the silence, the holding back, the chances I starved because I was afraid of the heat. That’s the kind of fire that eats you from the inside out, slowly and quietly, until you wake up one day and realize you’ve been surviving in the ashes instead of living in the flames.
So I keep playing with fire. Not because I enjoy the pain, but because I believe in the beauty that can only come from risking it. Because the warmth, the light, the transformation—all of it lives in the other side of fear. And because I know now that even if I burn, I can heal, and scars aren’t shame—they’re proof I was brave enough to touch what most people only watch from a distance.
The fire will always be waiting. I can’t promise it won’t hurt, but I can promise it will make you feel alive. That’s the point.
Lanalefay 