The soulmate wasn’t that, but he was the one I gave my virginity to. I say gave, because that’s exactly what it was, a choice. I wanted to, and I have zero regrets about my first time.

It was the 80s, so our parents were never home. We had a safe place, unlike a lot of people. But once I had a car, that became our place.

His best friend once accused us of having a relationship that was only about sex, but that was deeply untrue. There was so much more. There was the rose I carried every Friday. There was the deep, spiritual connection that led us to each other at the most bizarre times and in the most bizarre ways. There were love letters and grand gestures. He did the most amazing, romantic things to get my attention and to make me feel special. I can still see them in my mind.

There were so many layers to our romance. And then he moved to another city hours away to live with his mom. The intention was for us to stay together, but I wrote a letter that said I didn’t want to do long distance. The reality is, as a habitual monogamist, someone else had stepped in to fill the space he’d created by moving.

Apparently, and stupidly, I might add, he chose to read that letter while riding his bicycle. He got sideswiped by a car, broke his leg in multiple places, and somehow interpreted it as a message from the universe: he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So he moved back home.

I remember the day he returned. He had a cast from his toe to the very top of his hip. I was so glad he was back, and yet so upset that he had left. When I got out of my car and looked at him, I didn’t know what to say.

He broke the silence with, “What you want to do is slap me.”

Of course, I refused, but he insisted. And once I did, I felt so much better.

I remember exactly where we were, in front of his house at the crest of a hill, the horizon stretched out behind him. That image is burned into my mind.

And then he said: “We are meant to be. I know it with every cell of my body. Even if it’s not until we’re 92, we will be together.”

And you know what? I still think he’s right.

While I appreciate that, I realize now that was not real love. It was martyrdom for him and a lie for me.

I look back at the two of them now, and I realize that everything since has been me searching for the type of love I should have gotten from them. And when I look around at people who have healthy romantic love, it is built on the truth that they know the foundation of love that parents offer. Or they’re deeply tangled in a snare: one being a knight-in-shining-armor type, and the other content being desperately dependent on the first.

Perhaps at some point in time we will get into the intricacies of how this childhood trauma affects our inner child, or the psychology of how broken parents create broken belief systems. But for now, let’s just talk about love.

I dated a few really good people. People that, looking back, would’ve been the healthiest relationships. People that I should’ve held on to. Each time, I either ran to someone broken, or, in the early ones, I let a friend convince me to break up.

I realize now, of course, that she was not a friend. And based on the adult life that she lives, in addiction and everything else, I realize, of course, that she was as toxic as anyone else. So the good guys, the ones with their head on their shoulders, they got pushed aside.

So there were several before I met the soulmate, but he was different. He filled a hole in my very sense of self. I had met him earlier, sort of in passing. We knew who each other were, but the moment that we really met, I was fifteen. The deep soul connection between us was undeniable.

We could feel each other from opposite sides of the school, and eventually learned we could feel each other from opposite sides of the city. It was deeply fulfilling. Every Friday morning he brought me a rose. I collected them on the dashboard of my car.

I felt very special walking around with that symbol of someone deeply loving me. Now, of course, I realize that there are people who walk through life with that sense of someone deeply loving them because they know they are deeply, deeply loved by a parent. I never knew that.

He had his own trauma, his own interesting parental dynamics at home, and had even been sent to rehab earlier because, through his parents’ neglect, he had found his way into the liquor cabinet.

There were times I knew he needed me, and I would ask the teacher to leave the class and go to the bathroom. And I would just walk straight to where he was, around the corner somewhere.

Now, keep in mind, this was when teachers weren’t paying attention and there weren’t cameras or cellphones or anything else going on. In general, no one cared and no one noticed. I realize now there was this magical knowing in the teachers’ minds, as if someone with the power to control them whispered in their ears, “Let her go. Let her find him.” And so, I would find him, not because I knew where he was, but because I was drawn straight to him.

Later, he transferred to a magnet school downtown, far from my school. I didn’t even know where it was. But there was a day I walked out the school door, hopped in my car, drove straight to that school, and walked into that classroom.

Everyone in the class looked as if they were expecting me, and he said, “I knew you would come.” His teacher filled with light, knowing he had witnessed something miraculous. We left just in the nick of time, just moments before we both would have broken beneath the weight of the distance between us.

In a time before cellphones, before these magic portals that we carry in our hands, before he could have told me where he was or that he needed me. This happened.

I found him.

I didn’t plan it this way, but my life has unfolded in chapters marked by the people I’ve loved. Each relationship, whether it lasted years, months, or moments, brought with it a lesson. Some were obvious, some only revealed themselves years later. All of them have left me changed.

I’ve been the soulmate, the lover, the friend who stayed too long, and the one who walked away. Each story is different. Each one is true. And together, they’ve built a kind of map of my life that I’ve decided to share here, with you.

This isn’t fiction. These are my stories, my lived experiences. To protect privacy (and maybe keep a little mystery), the characters will have titles, not names: the soulmate, the musician, the gay one… but every emotion, every mistake, every revelation is real.

Why tell these stories now? Because I’ve realized that love is more than romance. It’s more than heartbreak. It’s the curriculum of life. And somewhere along the way, I’ve stopped seeing my history as a series of failures and started recognizing it as a kind of education.

Think of this as a serial memoir. A journal that unfolds like a novel. One chapter at a time.

Here, I’ll tell those stories one by one, like entries in a journal, unfolding like a novel. Characters won’t be named, only titled: the soulmate, the musician, the gay one… Every chapter is a piece of the path, a breadcrumb of spirit disguised as love.

This is a continuation, an unfolding. A serial memoir for anyone who has ever lost themselves in love, only to discover something far bigger waiting underneath.

👉 Don’t miss the first part of the story. Subscribe now to follow along.

Subscribe now