The word ‘soulmate’ is supposed to bring forth feelings of joy and love. Feelings of gratitude and excitement at having found the person we are meant to be with. Feelings of pure comfort and happiness.
But sometimes it feels like it does just the opposite. Sometimes it just stresses us out because it’s a shitty word.
It’s shitty because it makes us feel like we are supposed to have these overwhelmingly perfect love stories. Stories of people going to the ends of the earth for one another, of being totally wrong for each other on paper but being with each other anyway because their love is just that ~strong.~
The word invokes a panic within us that makes us feel like we need to be one-half of a romance that involves Grey’s Anatomy-style monologues, where we look at one another and speak in long-winded confessions that are almost as beautiful as the story that exists between us. You know the drill. Running through the airport to catch our loved one before they board the plane, kissing each other in the middle of a backdrop that could rival a Bachelor proposal set, standing outside their door in the pouring rain and saying something heart-wrenchingly perfect. That all falls under the word ‘soulmate.’
But sometimes all we want is to find our person.
The one who loves us despite our morning breath, the one who makes us laugh even when we’re super annoyed with them, the one who makes us excited to stay in on a Saturday night and cook and be lazy and do nothing. The one who will watch Stranger Things with us because we’re too scared to watch it alone, even though we think of ourselves as adults with full-time jobs.
The one who will clumsily stumble over their words as they try to say ‘I love you,’ which only makes it more perfect and more meaningful.
The one who calls us out when we need to be called out. The one who only makes us fall in love with them more when they reveal their imperfect nature, because it reminds us that they are human too and that they trust us enough to open up that which they most often hide.
Sometimes, that’s what you need. That’s the real romantic stuff – those everyday, ordinary human moments that occur in all of the time that exists in-between the perfectly manicured romantic comedy scenes.
Anybody can fall in love with a soulmate – the articulate, flawless, mysterious beings who never spend a single minute looking or feeling or seeming uncertain.
But falling in love with your person – somebody who still makes you smile despite all of the suck that surrounds us on a daily basis? That’s rare. That’s special. And that’s something that Hollywood will never be able to get its hands on. 
