I believe in soulmates. I always have. And there have been times in my life when I thought I had found mine. Now I know for sure I have.

Soulmates aren't what I thought they were when I was younger. They aren't always loved, at first sight, romance and happily ever after. They have a habit of showing up just when you need them, even if you don't realize they are what was missing. Soulmates can lift you up, put the pieces of a broken heart back together and show you how to be whole again. But they also have the power to crush you more completely than anyone else. Sometimes they're a lover or a friend you can't imagine your life without and sometimes they're absolutely heartbreaking tragic love stories.

That is what it was for me, a tragic love story. It started as a strong dislike and grew from there. I think the reason I did not like him was he reminded me of everything I wanted to be. Everything I wanted to change about myself, I saw in him. I'm sure he would say the same. We weren't friends at first, we didn't get along at all. Then I lost my mother unexpectedly in an accident. My friends were there for me, but he was the only one I wanted to talk to. The only one I'd let myself feel around.

I had never been more myself with anyone and we eventually became friends, then best friends and inevitably so much more. On the first anniversary of my mom's death, we visited the place she died and then went to dinner. I don't remember how it came up but he told me one of his teachers had told him love is always a choice. In an instant, I knew I loved him and I would choose to love him forever. But we had fallen in love long before we were ready. Over the next six years, we broke each other's hearts over and over again. Never on the same page, never ready for the same thing and never willing to admit what we were to each other. We ran away every time life brought us together. Now, I understand why. Finding the person that "gets you" more than anyone else is scary. Sharing your soul with someone else is terrifying if it happens when you aren't ready for it.

Soulmates don't always work out. Sometimes you leave each other broken and torn apart, completely unable to let anyone else in. You work and work to heal yourself and eventually your heart gets stronger. You get braver, you move on and maybe you even love again. A different kind of love, not two halves of a whole, but maybe close. Soulmates aren't always a happily ever after. But sometimes, they are.