There's this old Greek myth; basically it's where we the idea of a "soul mate” comes from. The myth goes that a long, long time ago humans had two heads, four arms, four legs, and one soul. Zeus, being the jealous, paranoid jerk that he often was, was scared the humans would have all-seeing properties and try to overthrow him. (Loss of power was his biggest fear after all.) To keep the “omniscient” humans from his throne, he split each human in half—including their soul—and spread them out around the world, thus weakening them. Since then, humans have spent their entire life looking for their "other half"—their "soul mate" so to speak. Cute right?
It's stories like this that have always lead me to believe that love is love, no matter if it is between a man and a woman or a woman and a woman or a man and a man or a man and a transvestite and so on and so forth. But recently I've been wondering about some things.
I like boys, I mean I'm plenty attracted to them, but I'm just as happy alone as I am with a guy, in fact sometimes I like being alone better. I don't feel like I need to find my "other half". At least I don't feel that way anymore. So what if I've already found it? What if I already found her?
What if a soul mate isn't necessarily someone you want to f*** (to put it bluntly)? What if it is simply someone you meet at some point in your life that changes you for the better, but doesn't necessarily make you want to have babies with him or her? I think that's pretty possible.
Here's why I think this: Maddy Gross; the person I am closer to than anyone else on the face of the earth, to put it simply: my best friend. We have been through so much together and we are better people for having known and loved each other. She is like my sister—hell, she is my sister, and I love her and her whole family. I have no qualms about it. When I'm with her or talking to her or even just remembering that I have her, I feel more...whole. Like maybe I've found my other half. Maybe she's it. But here's the “tricky” part. She's straight. Very straight. As am I. So, no f*ing-type-thoughts have occurred. I think a girl that makes me happier than anyone else, who cares more about me than anyone else (and vice versa) is sort of the definition of a soul mate, even if the romantic sexual stuff never even occurs to us. I love her, I consider her my soul mate, but I don't really want to do that with her, understand?
Here's where it gets really tricky. I don't think Maddy feels the same way about marrying that I do; she wants someone to settle down with and make her feel more...full, for lack of a better word. That's cool. She’s looking for a deep, personal, romantic connection that will make her feel like more of a whole person. She’s looking for a soul mate in a romantic mate, just like so many other people do.
So can we have more than one soul mate?
Well, maybe, in a way.
We build all sorts of connections to people in our lives. We build soul mate like connections and friend like connections and acquaintance like connections all the way down to "stranger I passed on the street one time" like connections. We even build connections through other people. So with all the relationship links we form in our lives, why can't everyone sort of be our soul mate? There is still that one person (again not necessarily a romantic/sexual partner) that is totally your soul mate, but every total soul mate is probably aware of another mate somewhere out there.
Here's my theory: at some point at the beginning of time, humans were all one Titan god type thing and our name was "human". We had 8 billion pairs of arms and legs and 16 billion heads and 4 billion souls all bonding and loving and chatting away. Zeus got scared (because of all the arms and legs and stuff) and split us all in half. And then, when we continued to scare him, he just kept splitting us up. We became smaller and smaller creatures, and finally our 4 billion souls got split into 8 billion humans. And we would spend the rest of time looking for the "other half" of our soul. But realxly, we were all one being at one time, each head connected and in love with the others. Some heads were simply more connected than others, creating the ultimate soul mate that we search for. In reality however, we are all looking to be connected to EVERYONE again, because that’s how it was at the start. Our soul mate is simply the person who can help us reconnect the best, and we don't necessarily need to have a romantic connection to our soul mate in order for them to help us reconnect again, right?