Soulmates

First of all, I refuse to write "soulmate" as two words, as Microsoft Word always wants me to. So that's just a little linguistic disclaimer.

I'm writing this post because it just occurred to me for the first time, in all my musings about soulmates, that it's not like some sort of ideal that everyone in your life approaches to some greater or lesser extent. I mean, I already knew perfectly well that there are different kinds of soulmates, or that people can mesh with select parts of your soul in different ways...but somehow it never hit me until this moment that some people in my inner circle are distinctly not soulmates of mine, to any extent really, and that that's in fact a good and important thing and not a deficiency.

So what do I mean? There's a certain quality that select people in my life have...they make me feel more fully and completely like myself around them, whatever exactly that means. Like me mixed with them is somehow closer to the ideal form of me than I am on my own. That's great, and I need that in my life. And that's what gets the term "soulmate" attached to it. But I also have close friends who are very very important to me who have a different quality...something more like, they push me from the outside to help me define who I am for myself. Yeah I know, don't I sound lame. But I don't know how to put it more concretely, at least not without specific examples (and not that anyone ever reads this, but technically it is linked from Facebook, so I don't like to talk about specific people, heh). Or they somehow complement me, support me, challenge me, give me different perspectives, and click with me so that I feel comfortable around them but not in quite the same way...not quite in that special way where being with someone feels pretty much like being alone only better. (And no, I did not mean for that to sound dirty.) But more like I can be myself and they'll accept me for it and help me shape who I am, as I said, sort of from the outside. And it's not a simple question of how similar someone is in personality, interests, et cetera. One of my most intense soulmates is actually not very similar to me in a lot of superficial ways, but he has this magical quality that when I'm talking to him, it's like he's just part of me and we've always known each other and I wouldn't be who I am without him and all that cliched but accurate stuff. But I wouldn't want everyone in my life to have that sort of quality. It's just different from person to person (well, duh), and sometimes there's a bit of that "soulmate" feeling, and sometimes there isn't, and it's all good.

Still. The outside looking in is always annoying. And I was reading old IM conversations today, in the process of writing email, that I shouldn't look at. Today was such a wonderful wonderful day, and I'm still feeling happy, but I feel like it's the kind of day that usually ends with some sort of fight and me going to sleep feeling upset and guilty and wistful and lonely and edgy. Weird how that happens. It's probably a chemical thing...a crash after an endorphin high? *laughs*

Oh well, I'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, hide's take on soulmate-ness (sorta):

名前知らない二人のままなら
分かり合えちゃったのにね。。。

Though if we'd stayed anonymous,
We'd have understood each other better...