When you realize: your soulmate is you..

in different form

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

Lately I’ve been thinking about my evolution of the word, soulmate.

When I was in graduate school (My MA-English Lit), I had a brilliant professor, the one who taught lit theory and I recall her saying—

Why do you think we put so much emphasis on finding the one/making ourselves whole—

I don’t recall anymore if this was for a lecture on feminist criticism or not, but, it stuck with me. Her point about how if we believed that we were inherently missing something, not whole, always looking for another, to satisfy ourselves—

If we believed that lie, then what happened? What was the result of that on us—individually and also in terms of consumerist culture, patriarchal culture with compulsory heterosexuality—

The idea is that a woman is complete on her own.

My ideas of soulmate have certainly evolved over the years—

At various points I have believed several people to be my soulmate over the years—

My ex husband, a former partner, a close friend,

When I was younger and more naive. When I didn’t have life experiences that disrupted me and made me think about how we change the impermanence of relationships.

There is so much over-emphasis in our culture that there is one soulmate for us, and that that soulmate is a romantic/sexual partner.

I think there is often this idea too that the soulmate will be consistent, always the same.

But, people evolve and change, life circumstances change and relationships certainly change.

Life is long and if you are blessed to live long enough, you move and change and expand, you bumble and stumble and you are made to think differently—

Soulmates shift.

I consider this now because I have also read how soulmates don’t complete you, they challenge you, and they push you to evolve and grow.

I have heard it said that they disrupt your world—for whatever portion of your life that they are present for…

This has dramatically shifted my idea of what is a soulmate does and who they are/may be.

It also has made me consider how—

I am finally able to evolve in such a way that I am my own soulmate, or—

To be able to return to myself.

So many of us have rejection, hidden wounds, wounded child selves deep within us—

After childhood fucked us up, our traumas, or deaths/griefs, losses, suicides, addictions, whatever your ‘thing’ is—

Whatever event(s) fundamentally shook you to your core—disrupted your entire world and sense of community and self—

We often lose ourselves, somewhere along the way.

What if that part that we feel we’re missing is—has always been—just ourselves?

And we gravitate to others to try to get it back but really—

It’s a journey of self in which we must reclaim, or reacquaint ourselves, with us—

This is pressing on my mind as the holidays loom before me—

I am more alone than I have ever been.

I am also more solitary—by choice—than I have ever been.

And I am more okay with that than I have ever been or could have imagined that I would ever be.

And it is not lost on me that this is largely because—

I am sober and in recovery and community for that.

I have done significant work on myself and my mental state through therapy, self-investment, exercise.

I am able to be alone now. I am able to enjoy my own company.

I often would rather be alone. I would rather read. By myself. I would rather just be with myself.

I am able to be emotionally sober—not relying on people or using them to gauge my own sense of self-regulation, because my own nervous system is shot and out of whack

It has taken a very long time and a lot of pain and missteps along the way; I wanted to be happy with being *this* alone long before I was really there. Instead, I would use diversions of trip or escapism to pretend to be okay alone when I was really not.

But I have told several close friends of mine lately that—

I have no plans for the holidays to be with family and friends.

I mean, I could. I have invitations and people I could easily visit. But—

Not only am I really okay with that now—

I actually am excited for it. I want it.

Finally able to relax into myself, I feel liberated and aware that—

I like myself and enjoy being with me a lot more than I enjoy being with a lot of people.

As someone who has always identified as an extrovert, lover of people, and also co-dependent and emotionally not sober—

That is huge growth on my part.

I am not alone. I am not lonely.

I am with myself. Because I am valid all on my own.

And in doing this, reaching this spot—

I’ve regained my soulmate.

My [lost] soulmate that I was seeking, is and has always been—

Me.