Dear Soulmate,
You know that feeling of coming home- that genuinely warm, overwhelming feeling of being welcomed back to where you belong? If I could explain to you how driving north on I-95 makes me feel, I would simply describe my experience very similarly to that of coming home.
I cannot tell you exactly where I was going, as some things are better left a mystery. But I will reveal that I was driving back into my past, that beautiful place of irreplaceable familiarity that I can only relay to you as home. As the miles fell behind me in my rearview and the sun’s reflection on the pavement made it glitter around each turn, I began to wonder where I was actually going.
I love to drive for the same reason I love to run; I feel I am making progress. There is that same level of productivity and accomplishment in both pursuits- and equally I am putting miles behind me regardless of how many. But there is something to be said for this vagabond-like lifestyle. If all I have ever known is to move on, am I really living in the present at all?
As humans we often believe that holding onto things like the past make us weak, which is why our natural response to our friends going through some of life’s more bittersweet transitions such as break-ups, moving jobs and selling a house is simply “move on.” But have we ever stopped to ask ourselves why?
While I believe in moving on, people sometimes forget that the past is a precedent of progress. In order to get where we are going we must know where we are coming from.
There are places in my life you may never see, chapters of my life that may have closed before you read them. This of course makes me very sad, because I want you to know everything about me, like how I spent my summer nights lying on docks, the first place I learned to drive standard- stalling on every hill, the first place I was kissed and the place I call home.
You will visit these places of my life in time, and you will read these stories of my life that were written before you, I know. But in the space between when you learn all these things, I fear I will be a stranger to you.
What gives me comfort though is wondering; what if I have already met you… and you already know all these things.
Love, R
letters2soulmate 