I Don't Believe In Soulmates

I don’t believe in soulmates. 

Maybe, perhaps (okay it’s probably likely), I believed in soulmates at age seventeen. Didn’t we all? Can we blame The Notebook? 

***

There is only so much space in each chapter of this book to convey a concept I want the reader to grab onto with both hands. 

I can tell this story, or that story. This anecdote, or that anecdote. I can use this word, or that word. Which one will pack a better punch? Keep them intrigued? Make them laugh? Make them cry? Make them feel anything at all? Inspire them to buy a copy for a friend?

What if I make the wrong choice?

***

When you believe in soulmates, you believe there is one right person floating out there in the universe, just for you. And it’s your job—mission, really—to stumble around until you find yourself in a perfectly-orchestrated meet cute. You both reach for the cinnamon at the same time at the coffee shop counter. You lock eyes across the strawberry stand at the farmer’s market. You accidentally bump arms in warrior pose during the yoga class you almost didn’t go to. 

You waltz through the world with your eyes wide open, looking, searching, hunting. 

Where is he?
Where is he?
Where is he?

***

When publishing on the Internet, you can, technically, make changes. Of course you run the risk of someone saving your work, archiving or screenshotting any page in its current state, but, generally speaking, if you find a typo or error six months later, you can login, adjust, hit save, and poof. Corrected. 

You can rewrite history, rewrite your own work. You can go back in time and adjust a line, or two, or 37. You’re committed, but the commitment is loose. An open relationship, perhaps.

It is not so with print. 

Print is I do. Print is for better and worse, in sickness and in health.

***

When you hunt for a soulmate, you are hunting for perfection. The perfect mate, the perfect partner, the yin to your yang. You are looking for the puzzle piece to complete your life, and there’s only one that will fit. 

***

Sometimes when I’m writing, I catch myself thinking, “Surely there is one perfect story to go here. Surely there is one perfect word to go there.” I just have to keep looking, searching, kissing frogs till I find the prince.

I keep forgetting I don’t believe in soulmates. 

There is only him, and me. We had our own meet cute in the summer of 2004—ordinary and sweet, your typical butterflies and fireworks, plenty of mix CDs featuring Death Cab For Cutie. We fell in love, and, three years later, promised to love each other forever in spite of our flaws, our imperfections, and the future fights about the dishes (which, to be clear, are never about the dishes). 

Good and bad followed, magic and heartache, slow dancing and slammed doors. This summer marks 15 years of marriage, 18 years of together. Make no mistake: I love him, and he loves me. 

But we are not soulmates.

***

There are a million choices to make in this book.

(Okay, not a million, something like 55,000.)

Every word is a choice. Every story, every anecdote, every photograph, every comma. 

This morning I taped a post-it to the wall. It says, “Reminder: you don’t believe in soulmates.”

There is not one right answer. There is only here, and now, and these specific words swirling in my head. This is who I am, today. This is the best book I have to offer, today. 

If I want to be in a committed relationship, I have to commit to all of it—the romance and squabbles, the trip to Greece and the trip to the ER, the camellias blooming in the front yard and the ants crawling all over the kitchen.

Perfection does not exist. But love does. And so I keep writing. Word by word, choice by choice, comma by comma, reminding myself there is no such thing as “the one that got away.” 

There is only this moment, this chapter, these stories … and me, propelled by faith, driven by love, committed to the very end.