The Real Me

I didn’t know the “real me” until I realized who I was around my soulmate. I cloaked myself with a tough work exterior that I lugged around the office and everywhere else like a ball and chain. I was constantly trying to prove my independence as the modern female does. I didn’t let hardly anyone into my inner circle because I didn’t want them to see the real me. Even though I didn’t have much to hide! He quietly and subtly came to know me, but it didn’t happen right away. See, I was quintessential loner, i.e., I worked hard and sold my energy to work, not human beings. I was okay coming home to an empty house and kitchen table. There were no expectations. He didn’t ask for my energy, full house, or dinner on the table though. Rather, he selflessly enjoyed my presence. His love language came out through food and home cooked meals: he loved putting the dinner on the table! Talk about opposites: I burned everything in sight. I would wake up to sizzling bacon, over easy eggs, and hazelnut coffee every weekend at his cozy apartment.

Heck, he knew how I liked my coffee a few days after meeting me and took great joy in watching me come to life through my first morning sip. I would giggle and perform my "happy coffee dance" as he called it, in my pajamas and rarely seen makeup-free face. I later understood that those precious mornings recharged my inner battery for the week and made me a better busy bee at work.

We initially dated for a year, but I missed out on the beauty of simplicity during that time: my soulmate is the person that enjoys ME for being my actual self. Rather than see how simple we could be together, I solely lost interest in his kind and gentle soul. We broke up because I drifted my attention back to work instead of doing the heavy lifting that a healthy relationship requires. I found that the breakup invited uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability and loneliness. I was used to being a loner, so I was worried that I had developed adult-onset depression or something related. In reality, I had willingly separated from my other half heartlessly. I turned to books as a mindless comfort, but their short shelf life brought little comfort. Books allow an escape into other people's lives, but many books inevitably involve a romantic plot or side story. Pesky books.

Even worse, I found myself wanting to deeply discuss a good book with him and get his thoughts on the plots. A good movie is even harder to avoid discussing (or even watching alone). I went about my life for six months in a militaristically mundane way. I didn't cook, so I started to associate weekend mornings with gut-wrenching flashbacks of his cookie cutter perfect breakfast feasts. I was no longer doing "happy coffee dances" anymore even though I was drinking the same coffee. His somehow always tasted perfect.

I realized that something greater than myself was missing and I wasn't finding it in solitary activities. Though I tried to socialize with co-workers and ask for more challenging work activities to eat up my time, all those endeavors reminded me of just how lonely I really was. My co-workers had significant others and I didn't want to celebrate work accolades alone. While coffee has magic ingredients, its void one morning brought a much-needed epiphany and newfound sense of bravery. The culmination of my addiction to independence happened when I was out of hazelnut creamer. As a creature of habit, I couldn't function without my morning hazelnut coffee. I had allowed myself to solely function on a work project all week, so I missed out on my usual grocery trip.

Though I functioned on "bachelor" food without batting an eye, I refused to skip a morning without my signature coffee. It was my thing. I drove to the grocery store realizing that he always had his fridge stocked with my hazelnut creamer for the sole purpose of making me happy. He was a thoughtful man and always mindful of my habits and idiosyncrasies, whereas I so easily went months without checking in on myself. He championed my work achievements without needing his own recognition and understood that work demanded my time.

I bought the creamer lost in a flood of memories. I left in a hurry because I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. I had known for that lonely six months that I had made a mistake, but I wasn't brave enough to confront my true feelings or even acknowledge how badly I wanted him back. Being independent invites a certain level of pride that makes sharing life, or even money or time with someone else, feel like failure. But a soulmate cannot be a failure. A soulmate is there to nourish one's soul that may so desperately crave a companion, which I evidently did. He made me stronger. Even independent me.

I swallowed my pride, grabbed my cell phone, and sent him a short but poignant text: It wasn't even a safe text either. Since he knew the “real me,” he would have interpreted the text in its intended way: that I missed him. Who knew the "real me" was so simple: makeup-free me giggling through a performance of my "happy coffee dances" in his kitchen with a cup of hazelnut coffee.