I miss you.

I would like to say this is a tragic statement about someone who died. I have them too. But this one is about him.

I am not the sappy, soggy kind of girl who has ever believed in fate or destiny or even serendipity. I have had my hopes dashed and drowned and strangled and left for dead one too many times to be that naive. There has always been something easier about expecting the worst. At least I have that one shoe to hold onto while I wait for the other one to drop. That is more realistic to me. Less profound and magical, but realistic. And I have always dealt in the currency of reality. Some people say I’m blunt. Some people say I’m rude. He said it was like looking in a mirror.

Have you ever felt that paralysing feeling in your skin when someone comes so close to your own DNA that it is as if you have always known each other? I want to differentiate here between like and lust and love and similarities – it’s different. You read about it. You watch movies about it. You hear about it and expect it feels exactly the same way it did when when your heart would skip a beat right before you kiss someone the first time. That’s nice, lovely really, but it’s different too. Your heart doesn’t skip a beat, it just starts beating the same way as that person. It syncs. Your energy actually settles down. You can breathe each other. You can feel each other. And you have absolutely no choice.

Even now, I can feel his thoughts. I am sure his radar is going crazy while I write this. It mostly just pisses me off these days. I say in my head, “Beat it” and he says in his “Make me”. At a stale mate. Again.

What do you call this? A soul mate? Is it that simple? Because frankly I have a thing or two to say to the powers that be if this is who they have chosen for me. Consider this – what if you were being robbed? Say you were thrown in the back room with a gun to your head and told to shut your mouth or you’d be killed. What if as you were sweating and crying and begging every god you could think of, you looked up, and looked into the eyes of your soul mate? Think about that. Like the very opposite of everything that ever made you feel safe and loved and good was now staring at you with the grim realization that you are the one true reflection of him.

Yep. Fuck me.

I imagine this is what the universe is saying to me. It’s not like Cinderella or the fricken mermaid that gives up her tail and walks on land. It is far, far less complicated. It’s not romantic or charming even. It’s simply two people who just cannot live without each other. Or anywhere near each other.

It makes more sense to me now having discovered this than when I thought everyone was born in the exact right place and time to stumble into their soul mate. How convenient and lovely would that be? I used to wonder to myself how the stats got stacked so evenly. Then I started to wonder about those crazy cat ladies who end up dying alone with the stench of unchanged cat litter -don’t they have a soul mate? Did they wander too far out of their geographical area? Did their soul mate? Did she miss a bus or an appointment or a memo? I mean if you read the stars or the palms or the tabloids – everyone has someone for them. It’s just accepted to be the truth. And they are wonderful. And they are kind and rich. And when you have a break up, people say, “He wasn’t the one honey”. And you start working out and fixing up and  going out more often so you will be hot and gorgeous and ready when you slip on a banana peel in front of him and he saves you from falling head first into the subway. I mean, we get out bed for this shit right? We slough off bona fide heart ache and self doubt and cruel indignation because we believe we will find the holy grail of partners – your god damn soul mate.

I literally feel like I’m about to tell you there is no Santa Clause and I feel like I should prepare you to reveal that while there is indeed a St. Nick, he is less the jolly gift giver you have always thought him to be and more the startling real human being that can’t remember your birthday or where they left their keys. Soul mates are just human beings who have been through the same or more or less than you and may not be anywhere near the same life page as you are. Soul mates aren’t matched on socio economic similarities, or matching skin tones or extra curricular interests. No. They are other human beings. That in some strange and weird and wonderful amazing way have a piece of you inside them that glows brighter when you get closer to them. It’s like a magnet to yourself. Your human, flawed, scarred self. I am certain he had a similar reaction to me the first time I started to cry and was looking up the soul mate manual on how to make it stop and just be wonderful. Like the first time he advise me I was “trying too hard” at sex and I wanted to instantly file a grievance with the soul mate association. It is confusing to me how you can love someone so much, so instantly, that has the ability to tear out your insides like they are casually gutting a fish. It is even more confusing to me that there is no earthly way to be with this person that supports a healthy state of mind. Like I’m in the back room terrorized at gun point all the time. How wretched, soul crushingly wretched.

Ok, before you write me off as a complete cynical nut job, let me say that despite my obvious disappointment, I am grateful to have had the chance to lay eyes on him, to touch him, to know him. He was indeed my mirror, holding up to me the very flawed way I was conducting myself, the holes in my well manicured exterior, the strengths of my tormented soul. I miss the way his very presence could soothe me. I miss the way we laughed at jokes seemingly invisible to everyone else, and how time passed like it didn’t even exist when he was around. Time sucker, he used to say. There was never enough time to drink him all in. And now there is nothing but time to miss him.

I think the idea of soul mates is very real but even after that experience I just don’t know or understand it all. I can’t fathom that being it, him being all there was to discover in this life. I hope that the notion of how I felt with him will keep me from being with less than I deserve since being with him also proved that even a soul mate can devastatingly be less than you deserve. Is a soul mate meant to be an everlasting love or the only thing that would wake you up when you were living a dead life? I just don’t know for sure. Even as much as I know for certain that something was strange and beautiful about us together that can’t be explained.

I’m thinking of you. I know you know this. And yes, I had my ginger tea today. Thank you for making it for me that first day. That, and so many other things you taught me have changed my life. And while in theory this alone is consistent with what a soul mate is meant to do, I will forever lament the absence of you and be thankful for it at the same time.