A Letter To My Soulmate, A Letter To Myself

Turn around, let me see your face, please look up for me. Let me wipe the dirt off your face and the tears off of your cheeks. Have you eaten yet? Can you recognize yourself in the mirror anymore or have you given up trying? I know you don’t want to talk so I’ll just do it right now. please listen.

I know you hold back tears on your way to work and it takes all of you to put on a smile when your boss comes over and asks you about your weekend. You make up some lie about having a great time but you really stayed in bed all day, falling in and out of consciousness, trying to wake up from what seemed like a nightmare. You try to block out thoughts that are the most harmful and replace them with distractions. I know it’s hard to concentrate, but I need you to hear me, follow my voice even if yours seems to be mute.

Things seem tense, hard to bare, and you feel like you are getting through each agonizing millisecond by the skin of your teeth. Are you with me? Don’t let go, I have so much more to say to you. I need you to believe in you again. You thought you wouldn’t have to go through this again and…I know, I know. Here, I’ll wait. You don’t have to hold back those tears okay? You’re in a safe place, please let it go. You’re so beautiful when you release everything that’s tangled inside, but when you stop crying and you can see again, just remember: you are not this.

You cannot be defined by this time, or any time, I need you to know this. I’m proud of you, you aren’t drunk, you’re stone cold sober and feeling every fucking thing and it’s overwhelming and you feel like you’re drowning. It gets better and I know your friends and family have told you so many times, this too shall pass, but you can’t see that right now. It will. Follow the tone of my voice even if you can’t hear my words.

You’re going to drown so don’t resist the waves as they wash over you. You are meant to be here, you should be here, but just know that it isn’t your time to stay under. You are breaking, but you aren’t broken and I love you. I love you even if you can’t love yourself, even if you feel like love isn’t for you. And when the tears dry up, when your skin starts to heal and the pieces of you are laid out for all to judge, know that love doesn’t exist outside of us. You want so bad to be accepted, loved and embraced by people as flawed as you are and you can’t see that love isn’t in a hug or a compliment or his tongue between your legs. It is to be.

Please don’t leave me, you’re all I have and I am going to make sure that as long as you are on this earth, you don’t leave knowing that everything you desire, crave, need and want is within us. You are your own soulmate and the time you spend in your own solitude, the beauty you find in your laugh lines, the time you take to not smooth those curves, but to love them, is maybe not what you were looking for but something you are blessed to have found.