A Reason to Believe

I had a conversation today about soul mates, well, a conversation about a conversation other people had about them. Anyway, I said when I was eighteen, I probably would have believed in soul mates for everyone else, but not for me. In that moment, saying those words out loud, I realized just how screwed up my self-worth was and has been for so long.

I remember watching John Hughes movies and thinking that that kind of love (Blaine and Andy, Jake & Samantha, Watts & Keith) happened to people, but it wouldn't happen for me because I was just too complicated. Of course, those movies tended to conveniently end just as the characters were getting together so we never learned about their dynamic as a couple, band they were all in high school, a place where true love blooms anew each day like mold in a dirty bathroom sink.

But then came Singles, and Steve and Linda, and their relationship, their instant ease and heat, their conversation and ability to reunite after something awful happened between them, made me think soul mates existed outside of high school, but again, where was I going to find that? Where was the man who wanted to listen to music and read poetry and talk about literature and the world and dumb tv and art and all the things that make me tick? Surely that guy didn't exist, and if he did, he was probably with someone else, out of my league, or would like me but only as a friend.

Now, though, I believe soul mates. And not because of some movie, either, but because I have experienced that feeling of having known someone since before you were born, that inexplicable connection that keeps you warm, that causes your heart to beat in time with theirs, that deep knowing that tells you when they are hurt even if you haven't spoken all day. I know how it feels to want to be only one place in the world and that is wherever he is, and I know how it feels to know he feels that, too. And the knowing, this complete certainty that you are, in every sense of the word, meant for each other can be so sweet, so pure and satisfying that you don't need anything else. Just time and that person next to you is enough.

The only thing I don't know is what it is like to actually have that last part. The time, the nearness. I used to have blind faith that two people, once they found each other and felt as we do, couldn't be apart, that the universe wouldn't allow it. Now, it is harder to believe that, though I want to desperately. All I can do is live my life, grateful for the sun each day, the small moments of light that make me lift my head, hoping, even when it terrifies me to do so, that I will be given a reason to believe again.