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By Misti Date: 2003 Nov 15 Comment on this Work [[2003.11.15.04.02.30129]] |
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If you believe in soul mates then you have at least a dozen. That guy you met on Pensacola Beach in Florida when you were twelve and still didn't have any breasts. You didn't like red hair but he reminded you of Corey Feldman in "The Goonies" because he was a smart ass and had charisma in spades. Then there was the guy at Lee Freshman who serenaded you with "Earth Angel" and asked you to the dance. He was a skater dude. He was the class clown. Everyone loved him but you were afraid he was teasing you so you turned him down, only to meet him years later in your beginning acting class in college. Oh, and there was the guy who touched your thigh on the youth group bus on the drive from New Braunfels to Midland. He trailed his finger along your right thigh and gazed into your eyes and you blushed and said,"Don't." He was the one you wrote stories and poems about. The first one you ever wrote poems about. Then there was the guy who escorted you in the beauty pageant you won when you were eight. You met him again your senior year of high school. He was a clown. He was into M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice. He couldn't spell worth shit. He was a player. But all it took was one embrace under the October stars to mark you his for life...or at least the better part of a decade. When you finally had sex it wasn't even any good but you will never forget the marathon phone conversations and the night he tried to rescue you from a guy who definitely wasn't soul mate material but changed your life forever just the same. If there are soul mates you have more than one. None of them were real, maybe, or perfect. But there is a connection, a fit, a spark that turns into a raging fire that destroys several trees and small animals and maybe even a cabin or two. You imagine soul mates. You think,"Well, I feel it and I've written lots of poems about it and I think of him when I hear this song or see this show or smell this scent so it must be real. A real big deal. Something you could never win on 'Wheel of Fortune' or buy at amazon.com." This shit can't be duplicated. It isn't about looks or intelligence or admiration, necessarily. It is just something you will always think of with a blush or a laugh or an I Can't Believe I Was So Stupid roll of the eyes. You may be alone for the rest of your life. You may live with different men and marry a few of them. The ones you mark as soul mates will haunt you regardless. And there is no rhyme or reason to any of it. You realize it's a bigger deal to you than it was to any of them. More than one person has told you that you reside in a dream world. You imagine scenarios and build yourself up to Cleopatra/Elizabeth Taylor/Ava Gardner/Helen of Troy status. You're Melanie Wilkes wishing you were Scarlett O'Hara. Still you are starry eyed and eternally thirteen or seventeen or twenty-five. Remembering the last time you saw their faces or heard their voices or smelled their cologne. Remembering what it feels like to be held with no promises or illusions of tomorrow. Remembering what it feels like to think,"I will be single for the rest of my life, chasing after men who can't be bothered." If you think long and hard enough, you will realize that soul mates are the ones you don't grow old with. Because in a world of rent and bills and mediocre sex and date nights at Olive Garden or Outback Steakhouse and arguments over Los Angeles and marijuana and babies and Texas and broken heaters and not enough quarters, soul mates are no more real than Pamela Anderson's breasts. |