I've already met my soulmate(s)... they're my friends

LOS ANGELES, CA. – When you’re younger you have this fantasy, I’ll have a boyfriend by 18, we’ll be married by 22, and we’ll have a dog with two kids before 25. Let’s just say I’m behind schedule and I’m so single that if I’d won a trip for two I’d just take myself twice. 

The word soulmate can be a tricky idea because people usually associate the word with someone that you share a romantic relationship with and you just know you’re supposed to be together for the rest of your life. 

Well I don’t see my life without the people who deal with my weekly dramatic Denzel Washington scenes. So my friends and I are together for the rest of our lives little do they know. So they qualify as my soulmate (s) as well, right? Right, I'll tell you how.

That word holds more weight than even over here. I apply it to the love I already have in my life. No sense in holding onto this good love I have for who? “The love of my life?” the person that I’m not even sure is really coming and if they do I don’t know when. 

But my friends will come. They’ll go wherever I want to go and vice versa. I want to go hike to the hollywood sign today? Shaniek will go. Need to talk about the man I fell in love with last week and we have no contact whatsoever this week? Wes will listen. He also has my Lyft and Uber location and when I work late nights makes sure that I get home. Even with the time difference, I love you homegirl. And who will remember the name of every single person I’ve ever fallen in love with? Emaiiaye. I know what you’re thinking, the list can’t be that long. Trust me the list is as long as the first sunday sermon.

I thought my first trip to Disneyland would be with someone I’m madly in love with and we’d share a noodle like the two dogs off of a lady in a tramp. Well it was, in a way. I took my friends Shaniek, Maya, and Kalyn. We shared beignets if that counts? I sure hope so because that’s as close as it's going to get. I know I said soulmates, but hold the kissing please. 

My friends are so deserving of the title soulmate. Some of my friends have been around longer than others but love is love. Because unlike every other person who thinks they have me figured out, these individuals sort of do.

Now here’s why I think they’re my soulmate(s). It’s different from your family that you’re born into because somehow by chance I met these people with no expectations of each other whatsoever. Like the girl I met off of twitter a couple weeks before the first day of high school and on the first day I walked into first period and she saved a seat for me. That’s my best friend Ellissa who has seen every fashion phase and every hairstyle I’ve ever had. Kylah, Maliah, Tite and Precious, who I didn’t know until my senior year of college (Thank You Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.) have seen me vulnerable and it was specifically reserved for them because I think showing your emotions is gross but they make the feeling of it being repulsive disappear somehow.

The love I have been blessed with money simply cannot buy, it’s priceless. Now I won’t act like I don’t crave romantic love because who doesn’t want that perfect love story? But when I take a look at the bigger picture I do have those people that I run to and tell them my good news. I have the people who make my stomach cramp into a knot so hard from laughing and I have to beg them to turn their funny off. They keep me going. 

So to my friends you all are the love of my life. Despite how I’m the most perfect person to ever walk this earth and you aren't. I've come to learn that soulmates come in many forms, and I've actually met my forever people already. They're my friends. I love my friends more than all those men put together and I know it’s a lot because Emaiiaye is the one that put the list together.