Photo by Geetanjal Khanna on Unsplash
About 2 years ago, I had gathered enough courage to follow my intuition to the sign up page of a dating site. The site in question being “Guardian Soulmates”. It appeared to be “the next indicated step”, going by the signs sent by “the Universe”. It took me months to write up a profile, and finally on a day of astrological significance, close to Valentine’s Day, I set it all up. Amidst candles, music and story, I was finally “on the market”. Online, anyway.
Nothing much happened for a while, so I signed up to a few other sites.
Again nothing happened. So much nothing has happened in my life I fear it will be on my tombstone. “Here lies Mary, nothing much happened to her”.
Then one day in March 2016, I was chatting to a co-worker who, in the past, had commiserated with me on the reality of “being single and looking”. This time there was no commiseration, as I believe she had either found “someone” or had just found “anyone”, so what I got instead of compassion was judgement.
That’s usually the case, by the way, courtesy of “The Coupled”. Virtually all of them have unfinished “stuff” around being single, which is why the mere reference to “the pain of being single” sends them straight into judgement, in an effort to keep the door to their own “stuff” firmly shut. Bless them, in the comfort of their “coupledom”, they believe themselves immune to suffering. Much like this co-worker did.
In her judgement of me, she advised me, as Coupled people are known to do, to “try online dating”. I smiled knowingly and said nothing, because I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to keep my mouth shut when interacting with these people. She said “Try [dating site]”. I took it as a sign. It was possibly the last dating site I had not joined, so the next day, I did.
Right after signing up, I went to the “search” section, yet without searching, a photo showed up, I don’t know how. I went “OH”.
It was “Him”, or someone who looked remarkably similar to “Him”. “Him” being the man I’ve known to be my soulmate since I was 12 years old. This needs some explaining.
From around the age of 12, the “image” of my soulmate has been pretty much set in my mind. Despite this “inner knowing”, I have gone against my intuition my whole life, and basically dated any man I liked who liked me back. Yet after finding “yoga” and learning to trust my intuition, I decided I would wait until I found “THIS” man. I knew who he was. I could have painted a portrait of him, if I had had any drawing skills.
Back to my story. This man’s photo shows up, and I instantly click to see his profile. I read. It’s him. It’s him down to things I had asked the Universe “on a fancy”, things I never hoped him to actually have. There he is. So I click “like”.
He instantly messages me back, and things progress further. Within a week we are meeting in person. You can say that when I follow my intuition, I really follow my intuition.
This is a sad story, much like most of the stories of my life. My close friend says that my writing is often heart-wrenching, to the point it makes for hard reading.
There isn’t much I can do about that, since these are the stories of my actual lived life, and I don’t go out of my way to choose sad stories, they happen to me.
The Universe may have given me the signs, it may have indicated each step of the way that this man was my soulmate and that we were meant to be together. Over and over I would experience “synchronicities” that indicated that we were meant to be. And yet.
It seems such guidance was entirely one-sided, for this man never felt the same way towards me. So. “We” never actually happened.
Like I said, it’s a sad story.
I wonder if it’s possible for one’s intuition to go awry, like people who start hallucinating. Perhaps I’ve been seeing things, or believing things, that were never there.
I’ve always known I would “end up single”. I remember being 8 years old and crying to my mother that I would be single forever. I would keep bringing up the story of my Dad’s aunt who never married. My Mum wouldn’t understand my cries of despair, and so she would reassure me that “everyone who wants to get married does so”, and the reason why that aunt didn’t was because she didn’t want to. But this failed to reassure me. Because I knew. A part of me “knew” that I would end up single.
I wonder now how much of the “future” we can predict. Whether we are born with a certain “destiny”, and whether this can be known to us.
How is it possible that my intuition has been telling me, since age 8, that I would “end up single”, while since the age of 12 I’ve known what my soulmate would look like? I don’t know the answer to this. Maybe they are both possible.
Maybe I did meet my soulmate last year… And now, it’s time to “end up single”.
I continue to follow my intuition because I have nothing else to go by. Following the rules of this culture never got me anywhere, and while following my intuition isn’t getting me anywhere either, at least it’s something “new” and possibly soul-based.
And my intuition told me today to delete my accounts on every dating site I joined.
My intuition is telling me to stop looking for love. Or perhaps it’s more brutal than that. It’s telling me that there will be no more love.
This doesn’t make me as sad as it used to, a direct consequence, I believe, of doing the “work”. I would say I am 99% ok with this most of the time, 1% sad. Perhaps I’m 2% sad at most.
The “imagined future” where I finally meet the “One” is gone. Vanished. Poof!
I am no longer going through life leaning forward, trying to live in a future not meant for me.
I am no longer craving, praying, wishing, longing.
I am trying to live in my present life, rather than in a future life not meant for me.
I am trying to practice believing that there is a purpose to my life that does not include a soulmate.
Most of all I am trying to practice believing that I could still be happy, even with this life I have.
It is not easy, but it’s all I can do for now.
That is, until my intuition tells me differently.
