Soulmates

I had a soulmate. She passed away nearly a year ago. But because our connection was through our souls, I still have her. And, in many ways like I was never allowed to have her before.

I was truly despondent over her death. My heart was set adrift in a way I had never experienced. I had had other loves transition before, but her death was something totally different. We were together for 40 years. For most of my adult life, I had an anchor through all of the storms and a quiet harbor to rest peacefully. I was grounded in the rock-solid proof that I was not alone. Losing her shifted my core and turned it on its side. I no longer knew what was normal.

I could enumerate all the ways she opened my eyes to the world we live in. She was unmatched in her ability to show me something I hadn’t seen before. And I her. Who we are isn’t just about what she brought to me, it is also what I gave to her and all that she gratefully accepted. It is also the lessons we learned through each other about what is, can be, should be and all of the undersides of those gifts. What isn’t, what can’t be and what shouldn’t be.

We wanted to be together in every human way possible. But life isn’t about everything. Ever. Life is about living with what you can have, when you can have it. Individually we measured what we wanted and tempered it with what we could have. I wanted to be with her. But I also wanted the freedom to make decisions for myself in the way I needed to. I couldn’t ask her for a commitment to be only with me and feel free to decide things while not taking her best interest to heart as well. She wanted to be with me. But she wanted that to be our secret. A secret that we both new would test our individual senses of honesty. I wanted the freedom to love her openly, she wanted the commitment to love her without reservation. Neither of us could be all that the other needed. We constructed a place where we could partially be who we were for each other in the ways that were most important. It was never enough. But nothing was ever going to be enough.

The love she gave me, gives me, is astounding in its breath and width. It is breathtaking and life affirming. Undeniable in its power. It has an ability to push its way through my subconscious and out into the living world. I have never known a love like hers. It is true to itself and the energy it carries and shares. I needed to be loved in such a way. We all do. But it was something I never thought I would be offered. She loves me better than I have ever been loved before or will again. My hearts path stops with her.

Neither of us were perfect. But we were perfect for each other. I made her think. She made me feel. We made each other better people than who we were with others. With her, I was committed to being the best person I could be. With me, she bared her heart and soul with an indestructible trust.

Our intimacy was on the edge of every interaction. A whisper, a slight brush of a hand, a look across a room. The closeness of our essential beings was undeniable. The immeasurably deep-seated trust we had in who each other was defined who we were within ourselves. The trajectory of both of our lives were changed by having each other in our lives. Because she was so instrumental in helping me find lost parts of myself, I don’t know where I end and she begins. Because I was so different from anything she had ever known, I held my own place in her heart that radiated out to all other aspects of her being. We were the fodder and the product of who we were with each other.

I grew up without love being the driving energy. I learned how to totally invest my inner life because my outer life was so deprived of life’s necessities. She grew up understanding love was transactional. Not just a give a take, but a give and take of particular specifics. She was loved when she behaved a certain way. She gave all that she had. They took her in small increments. Transactional doesn’t always mean equal.

In her physical absence, I can see the lines we drew were imaginary. She now enters my living world with all the vibrancy of a still beating heart. I once described her not as a bright light but as an array of shimmering rainbows. In her life, her essence glowed, a glittering light show, sparkling with the energy of the sun. But it is now a spotlight, directing it where she wants to go, for those who can still see it. Using it as guide to find her, for those who go looking. I have to look no further than my very own heart.