Do you believe in just one soulmate?
I don’t.
At least, I don’t think there is just one person out there for everyone. Instead, I believe there are hundreds of people out there in the world that you’re meant to know at different points of your life for whatever reason that may be. They’re not really called soulmates. They’re just meant to be there in your life. Maybe they’re soup snakes.
These people, the ones you’re supposed to meet, they’re the ones that serve some kind of purpose that you may not realize for what it was until much later in life, could be anyone. It could be your parents, or may your best friend’s mother. It could be a coworker or a manager you had for a brief period of time. It could be the person you date and marry or someone you dated for like 12 minutes in high school. It could be your worst enemy or your best friends. It could be that lady at the grocery store that let you go in front of her or maybe the guy who cut you off in traffic.
These people are here, in your life, to create sort of lesson or impact on you in some way, shape, or form that defines the journey you’re exploring here on earth.
Now you’re probably reading this and thinking, “Why is recipe girl, who regularly embarrasses herself on her Instagram stories, talking about philosophical life connections?”
Well, I don’t know. I always have. I just haven’t in a long while. I kept my mouth quiet about it because I felt too exposed, because I wanted to own my content, because I was focused on my career. And now I know I can manage all of that while still being authentic to me.
Writing about feelings is authentic to me.
Anyway, I digress. This year has been a year of brevity. It’s been a year of shifting tides. One of those almost daily moments where you ask yourself, “Uhhhh…wait…wasn’t I JUST doing this other thing? What happened to my old life? What happened to my old community? Where did they go?” It’s staring into a mirror and seeing the familiarity, yet still getting used to the fact that everything is just so different than it was even just yesterday. In a way, it almost feels like loss when there’s been so much more given.
So I guess you could say, I know thing or two about finding reasons for why the people come in seasons of your life. Because isn’t that what we ask when experiencing loss of some sort? Why? Sometimes I catch myself asking, “What was the reason?!” in Cardi B’s voice when dealing with some sort of life lesson that I cruelly did not want to learn. That sound clip, in particular, was on repeat earlier this year as I navigated the weirdest, most challenging part of the year so far.
I think we all have this experience at some point in our life.
I know this isn’t the only time I have had a string of constant growth and transition. If you haven’t experienced this, you may be a scientific anomaly. Cool for you!
The hardest kinds of loss, and the kind I’ve more recently dealt with throughout this entire year, are the ones that were chosen out of obligation to oneself. The kind of decisions in which you put your feelings aside despite how much you feel them to make a logical choice for the future that just makes more sense.
I have had moments where I looked in the mirror and said to myself, “I wish I could just walk away from this because it’s not good for me, but I love them/it/this too much.” And then I have had times where I have told myself that “I wish I didn’t use such logic to enforce the will upon my future because it just hurts too much to walk away.” At the end of the day, you’re choosing yourself. Which is the best thing you can do when you’re in a privileged state of independence.
So why?
And then I stop myself and ask, “Why?” Why did I meet that person? Why did I take that opportunity? Why did I make that decision? What was I supposed to learn from that/them/this? And sometimes I feel like Cardi B and sometimes I take a little bit of time, a long sigh, and really think about it… a lot of the time it’s something in the middle of those two. And I realize it was because whether I like it or not, meeting that person, doing that thing, making that decision was something I was supposed to do.
As humans, it’s in our nature to want to figure out the why. And sometimes there just isn’t one reason. Sometimes the reason is just because it’s bringing you to the place you’re supposed to be. Sometimes we just need to accept the numerous soulmates or soup snakes that enter and exit our lives for what they are. They just are.