This week’s journal prompt from Sometimes Sweet asks:
Let’s talk about love. Do you believe in the idea of a soul mate? Do you think there is one person for everyone- and do you think that no matter what, if you’re “supposed” to meet that person you will? This week, talk about your experience with love and discuss what you believe, and also be sure to touch on what helped shape those beliefs.

I am going to first answer this question the way that I would have answered it in early 2011:
I believe that there are no such things a soul mates. There is not one person for everyone. There is no fate. These were all just weird little ideas whipped up by Hallmark and Disney. In reality, it is all just a matter of choosing a person and continuing to choose that person until you die. And it doesn’t sound very romantic to say it all like that but I really would argue that it is, in all truth, the most romantic way to live. Admittedly, I’ve never been in love and therefore can not fathom what it might possibly be like.

Libby today, though. At least Libby as of June the tenth, two-thousand-fourteen, feels differently.

I can’t say that I know for a fact that there are soul mates or that fate exists or that there’s totally just only one person destined for everyone. I can say, though, that my soul has met her match. One of many? One and only? I really don’t know but I know that my soul has a mate. It feels very, very silly to say that Ryan and I were destined to be together but truly it’s hard to imagine that it could have happened any other way. If it’s not destiny, then I have to assume that millions of alternate universes exist and this is the one universe where such an unlikely pair found each other in such random circumstances and against all rationality and intention, fell really hard for one another.
The fact that I get to hold Ryan’s hand still just blows my ever loving mind. How did I get so lucky? Because this is the universe where it’s true. And I hold very tightly to that hand.

Maybe it is a matter of us just happening to meet up with one another at just the right time when both of us were able and willing to entertain the idea of something more than the semi-distant-friends that we’d been since I was a teenager. I really do think that’s the case. He’s just been right what I needed, right when I needed it (and he’s said the same to me).

Not to say that it isn’t work. You know how they say that anything worth having is worth working for? I still think that choosing each other every day is the most romantic part of our relationship. I’d say that there’s a good amount of luck or chance or fate or God that brought us together but there’s just as much, if not more, choosing each other every day. Always recognizing that this life together is precious and then treating it as such. It’s hard to say this without utilizing every available cliche.

Anne Lamott says that the perfect relationship is one in which both parties believe that they got the better end of the deal. I am less certain than ever before about the answer to fate and soul mates and destiny and one-person-for-everyone. I don’t know if it’s God or randomness or alternate universes, even. But I’m going to live as if each one of those options is the true one because I don’t want to risk it.

I love him with my whole soul and the better part of the whole thing is that I know that he loves me with his, too.