A few months ago 3 of my dearest girlfriends and I had just ended a wonderful day at the MFA in Boston and were on the train to Copley to do some window-shopping in Newbury Street and maybe grab a bite to eat. On the train we each reflected on how far we had come from the first time we all met each other at orientation that fateful September in 2014 when we all started our 2-year MBA program. Let me take this moment to introduce the girls in my life to you all.
First we have Laura, our token asexual who spends 40% of her salary on handbags and flowers. She is a junior financial analyst at the Boston Center of The Arts, a job that drains her, but she loves the people she works with and the events she gets to go to for free make everyone in our circle turn green with envy. Along with collecting handbags, she also collects gay men who she tries to fix me up with. On her good days Laura dresses like a lady who lunches, complete with vintage Chanel jewelry, wide brim hats and is always armed with gossip. On her bad days however, Laura can be seen driving around the suburbs wearing sweats or at the gym aggressively shooting hoops or at home, wrapping everything she has in her fridge in bacon and roasting it.
Next, Danielle. She has rainbow highlights and is from Canada. She collects Funko dolls and wants a job managing teams in the video game industry. She is the one who exposed me to K-Pop, anime and Pokemon Go. She has a deeply troubling past and spent her teen years in a weed-induced haze. She, through sheer will power and a boyfriend who nursed her fragile emotions made it through the pain and was the only one in our group who managed to get a high distinction attached to her name when she graduated.
And finally Yuki! She, through a summer internship at Earnest and Young had secured a full time position in New York and is scheduled to leave us behind in Boston later this month. Yuki not only had her career figured out but also utilized her time in New York to gain some much needed perspective on life and amassed a killer wardrobe. She fell in love with one of our classmates who belongs to China’s two percent and they were both pretty much the Brangelina of our class until he slipped and fell into his colleague’s vagina, when Yuki was in New York. It’s safe to say that all hell broke loose. Two nasty breakups later Yuki and Boy Billionaire still remain a thing. Danielle, Laura and I were highly cynical of the relationship but it didn’t help that Boy Billionaire was ever so charming and also a mutual friend. We just couldn’t choose sides and somewhere down the line we just decided that when the time came for Yuki to exit her problematic relationship we would all be there for her, to pick up the pieces.
On the train we discussed soulmates. We all had a different definition of what a soulmate should be. Laura wondered if she would ever find someone who would accept the fact that she just didn’t want sex. The three of us looked at her deeply concerned and all we could manage were week smiles and assurances that we would always be there for her. Danielle, the only one in a healthy relationship said she didn’t deserve her boyfriend and sometimes woke up drenched in sweat thinking of the day when her boyfriend might leave her after waking up to the fact that she was deeply flawed and unworthy of love. Yuki discussed her fear of loosing her self to Boy Billionaire; she said that whenever she was with him she felt complete and that is what she hated about the relationship; for when he cheated, she felt broken, broken because a part of her that was him; shattered into a million pieces and she feared she would never be whole again.
I stood there half listening and thinking back to a day a long time ago when I was in high school. My parents took turns picking me up from school and I think they knew that I was having a tough time because we always did lunch at one of my favorite Lebanese restaurants right after they picked me up from school. I was having lunch with my dad. I was still in my uniform and was a hairless wonder. In a shrill excited voice I asked my dad if he believed in soul mates. I don’t know what the context of the conversation was but I think I asked my dad this because a) my mom wasn’t with us and b) I always found my parents thoughts on each other absolutely delightful. My dad tore a piece of pita and dipped it into a bowl of humus and said “I don’t know about soulmates but I do know this… my parents will die, you will go away… you know for higher education and then you’ll start a family… the only person I can count on to be there for me is your mom and… I’m so glad it’s her”… I smiled then and I was smiling in the train too… I noticed that the girls were now staring at me, blankly smiling into the nothingness. The warmth I felt from the memory I just revisited faded and it was replaced with a deep loneliness that made me feel heavy… my knees almost buckled and I felt drained… I looked at Yuki and then the nothingness again and said…
“I’m so alone… ”
The four of us huddled together on the train while I wiped away tears that just wouldn’t stop… what hurt… what felt wrong… what made me feel so miserable was that friends weren’t enough. Friends find love, jobs and circumstances that take them away from you… parents die, and I was 25… I had never known love. I had never felt the ache of being separated from someone who felt the same ache too. I’ve never reached out in the night and held a hand that reassured me. I’ve never been hugged with the intent to comfort my deepest sadness. I’ve never been kissed by someone who wanted me the way I wanted them… I’ve never been touched by someone who thought of me more than they thought about themselves.
I cried that day because I whole heartedly believed in a soulmate but somewhere deep inside me I had this nagging soul crushing feeling that mine was lost… never to find his way to me when I reached out for him in the dark.
