I Found my Soulmate:

and we Bonded over Duct-Taped Cars

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

Within the past year, I read a quote by the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, that I think a lot about now, in my forties, single, and childless and now middle-aged:

I have shared it before, on here, but it basically states that she spent decades of her life looking for the encouragement, love and support from one man that she now knows she can only get from a group of women.

For Gilbert, she did find partnership and love in a woman, later in life, but here—she’s not speaking to that—

She’s articulating the ways that platonic love in community and encouragement, the ways in which women emotionally support one another, is the type of love that she needed, was craving, and was lacking in her life, that she was hungry for.

It speaks to me. It is is true for me.

And I think that both suggests that we cannot get from one partner—man or otherwise—all that we need, even if we love them and they us, and it is a healthy functional relationship. Our culture and society has lied to us that romantic love will be able to provide [[all of] this for us, in the form of a perfect life partner or soulmate.

My biggest lessons in turning middle-age are both that—1— I am the greatest love of my life and that 2—soulmates can be friends.

And my best friend is, my sahwira, my sacred, soul, sister.

Influenced by Rom-coms, Hallmark culture, and social media, I spent way too long fighting against this inevitability. The notion that a best friend could be your soul - mate, or the person that “got you” with whom you shared a special bond.

I have called multiple men in my life soulmates who didn’t have strong enough sense of self to be themselves, in order to have a committed relationship with me, one that wasn’t co-dependent; another who willfully didn’t understand me and evaded accountability or self-growth; others who were too self-focused/selfish; others who simply did not communicate or stick around.

I’ve learned better, now—

I also think that sometimes we are deceived because we think that those we are close to and those people who “get us,” will be there. But they might not stick around. In this way, perhaps, soulmates reveal themselves to us in who stick around for the long-haul, through changes and evolutions in life.

Or, alternatively—I’ve also heard it said that—perhaps we have different soulmates at various stages in life, and perhaps we also have different partners depending on how evolved we are, how much work we’ve done on ourselves and in what stage of life we’re in…

Perhaps it is just simply, wrong, that there is only one—we get all confused and because we entangle it in the hopeless standards and expectations that western culture and American society place on our one, perfect soulmate, who is also our life partner.

Horseshit.

We have many selves, parts of who we are. Perhaps we need others to help us and reflect parts of us but they can’t…won’t be able to in all aspects.

I am blessed: I met a soulmate when I was 7. And I still have her. She’s withstood long beyond many relationships that I was certain would remain.

We laugh about how we met, and frequently reminisce the moment— where one of us exclaimed to the other:

“Hey! Your family has duct-tape on your car too!”

And from there—I had a best friend, someone I could relate to, someone who “got it.”

And we bonded over how both of our family cars were quite literally falling apart, taped, to hold them together and to gerry-rig fender benders, parts that were rusted and struggling to break free from the whole body.

We bonded over the “normalcy” of parents who didn’t sleep in the same bedroom, and we bonded over lacking basic necessities like heat or water while growing up, we bonded on how we were deeply embarrassed to let other people into our home—but not each other—, and oh-so many other things.

That list has continued and grown, over the years. As we work to address the wounds of our childhood and how we need to pursue our own healing and therapy, addressing the ways in which our backgrounds and genetics have influenced our own lives and and relationships, habits and our own mental health.

Today she told me that she often takes for granted that we can share things with one another that others gape and are shocked and horrified by, parts of our childhoods and families and upbringings that were just “normal” to us. Some of these oddities aren’t even the major capital-T traumas for us, so we get a bit de-sensitized to them, and only when others react strongly do we even stop to recognize that others have had very different realities growing up.

We never really know another’s background, how they grow up, and what “home” they return to, after a day of school or work.

I wonder sometimes about this, sometimes, as I stand at the front of the class, —confident and articulate after all of these years of teaching, as a College professor, a Dr. I’m well dressed and groomed. I know I belong there, but I didn’t always think so.

In the classroom, I consider how I may be among [many] students who are first generation college students, who grew up in poor or working poor homes, like I did. Whose lives have been shaped by addiction and mental illness and traumas. I wonder if they ever think that, or consider it—that we may be more similar than they would ever realize.

Or, maybe not. We never know their backgrounds and their stories. Unless they share them.

Regardless, I am thankful to have had the support that I have had—my soulmate, cultivating my other chosen family/amazing friends, doing just as mama advised me to do—creating family as I go. I have been able to create communities wherever I have lived, and I have moved frequently.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved Anne of Green Gables, and my mother made it a point to take me up to Prince Edward Island to visit the land of the red dirt, after she had her first heart attack. She wanted to make sure that I saw it and that we went there before she died. So, when I was 14, we traveled to the birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

In the books and movies, Anne labeled “her person,” Diana, as her “bosom friend,” and “a really kindred spirit.”

I am eternally thankful for the friends that I have. No matter where I am in life, however low, I know that I can reach out to them, and they will carry me. They know that I am always there for them.

The soulmates of my heart. My kindred spirits. My bosom friends.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash