SoulMates: Why Not More Than One? A Journal of My Good Fortune to Guide Others to the Same

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Yin to My Yang.”

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BEING OPEN TO LOVE BRINGS LOVE TO YOU

What rule of this universe says we only get one soulmate? I feel I’ve been blessed with two. One is fondly called SoulSister every day in Facebook posts, text messages, and phone calls. She has been in my life over 15 years, and I don’t see our hearts separating any time soon. The other is referred to as MyHusband and has been there since we were 9 & 14 years old, but was kept out of reach until our hearts were ready. We have just celebrated our 5th anniversary, even though we should have met and married many times over in our lifetimes.

SoulSister & I made an immediate connection when we met. It almost seemed like we lived the same life all the way up to this time in our life when we were single mothers who were dating or living with  brothers. As we got to know each other and talked about our childhood, former spouses, and life choices made before that time; the similarities became a little eerie to me. We grew up with the same kind of father and married the same kind of men. We were even both raising sons and had the same kind of hippie-chick attitude toward life.

As our time together grew in family activities with those brothers, so did our bond. Her children grabbed my heart and became my Bullfrog & JayBird, and her healing touch had my boys crying for her with every little boo-boo that boys often suffer so they had hers. The bond grew tighter through shared stories of past personal crises and shared moments raising our children through broken arms and other perils of raising boys and dating/living with men as single mothers. Soon the relationship I shared with her brought more positives to my life and created a better, more giving person in me than the relationship I had with the brother I was living with; and, without a doubt, I knew it was coming, he was forcing me to choose. Of course, the fear of losing her as a friend as I easily walked away from him gave me some trepidation, but I had to choose her.

She remained with me through it all. The tears at night about losing yet another man, crying about being lonely, wanting to go back to him so I wouldn’t be alone; she heard and listened to it all. Silent listening, holistic healing, quiet and often spiritual advice, some kind of psychic connection that often scared the hell out of me, and phone calls through the commercials of ER and other shared TV shows we watched together at separate homes carried me through the next couple of years through new adventures and new relationships with men that always seemed to end. It often seemed I ALWAYS needed her and she was there until the time came that she finally needed me as her relationship with the brother she was seeing came to an end, and then I was there for her.

There was no question to opening my home to her and the boys. This led us to new even more crazy adventures, activities, and even rumors around the little town we lived in. We were two single mothers living in a three-bedroom home with four young boys. “Small towns lead to small minds, and big mouths,” was a bit of advice I didn’t hear from her until later but it certainly came into play here. Everyone thought we had become a “couple” and I have to say that if same-sex marriage had been legal then I would have done it. We were single mothers trying to raise our boys with limited income and marriage between us would have at least provided her sons with medical insurance at no additional cost to me, so why not?

Our private weekends away when our boys were with their “Dads” didn’t do anything to dispel the rumors, but they were badly needed by both of us. Discovering that special place where we could go camping for the weekend and be ourselves without risk of judgement gave me a great freedom, a new relationship and another friendship that’s lasted since I’ve last been there. It gave her new, more fun, memories with a friend who stuck by her in a moment when she would be hurt by seeing that brother there with the new woman in his life, and replaced some of the pain of losing him and the place they shared. Our last weekend there was a mix of pain and fun for both of us when she was called back to her home state by the high school sweetheart all her relationships since had tried to replace but couldn’t.

Leaving Louisiana for Florida only physically separated us. Phone calls and promises to visit back and forth, no matter what, kept us together. And there still was that scary psychic connection. Even though life took us, and calls were sometimes weeks, even months apart the moments we really needed each other rang that line in our hearts. Those calls always started with “something told me I needed to call” or “ok, what’s going on now” and “how did you know I was thinking about you?” The love she shares with her “other soulmate” proved itself in their marriage, and although I wasn’t physically present for their wedding I was there in my heart and wished her the greatest love in the world while I still ached for mine.

He eventually came along in a shocking way that’s another story for another post, but when he did the soulmate connection between us hit me like a ton of bricks. As we got to know each other we discovered many moments in our separate lives that should have brought us together from the time I was 9 and he was 14 years old, but didn’t. We missed each other then, at the grocery store he worked and my dad and I did family shopping. Instead of being best friends with my Godmother’s son in the same town, he lived the next town over and was friends with her sister’s son. He was 16, with facial hair that passed him as old enough to work offshore when he lived in the apartments next to my dad’s boat and motor business when I was 11, and when he returned home from the Army at 20 yrs old, his job was just a few blocks away from that same shop.

Those times that we were just out of reach of each other continued through separate marriages to different people as we began adult families and raised our children. We missed each other again when I was divorced and going to college while my boys lived with their father and his sister’s best friend. We have no regrets about the lives we led until meeting when I was 39 and he was 44 except for that lingering feeling that part of our hearts were missing. We are still discovering and discussing how our hearts were connected for 30 years before we met. The craziest and, most profound, relation between us that we only just discovered is the link between MyHusband and soulmate and my soulmate, SoulSister; this came after being married four years.

In the time before her relationship with the brother that brought us together, SoulSister tended bar with a special “pervert’s corner” where the guys would bounce quarters into her ample bustier. She and I were reminiscing on Facebook about this time in her life, as we talked about our equal desire to write because we both have stories to tell that are separate but intertwined. During this Facebook chat with SoulSister, MyHusband was on his phone with his sister about being a grandmother for the first time. They came to the topic of losing his neice’s father in an offshore accident, and that scary psychic thing rang out again; but in my mind this time. I remember the bar SoulSister worked in as a place where guys like MyHusband’s brother-in-law spent their time when they were inshore and that he once told me his sister had worked there also, so I had to ask SoulSister if she had a recollection of MyHusband’s sister. And, there IT was again, maybe the most important one. A moment, connection, not so secret message from God that is telling MyHusband and I that we are meant to be and that SoulSister will be with me forever.

So, there you have it. Why not more than one. She has two and I have two. We both fit together with our husbands like Yin and Yang, and we also fit each other the same way.