Allison's Private Journal

6:03 PM

February 26, 2003

Dear Journal,

Just was sitting here on my unmade bed, listening to my dashboard confessional CD and pretending to do some homework when I thought I should write. Mr. Maynard is going to coach the softball team this year! I went up to his room w/ Mike this morning (an invite from Mike, nice little surprise). K, well I’ll b back to write more in like 45… Oh yeah, I still love Tom   lol

6:56 PM

k dinner is over and I’m back to listening to dashboard confessional. wow I’m a little sad but I’m really becoming obsessed with this CD! I think I’m slowly getting over my whole Tom thing. I don’t ever want to forget him or the Amazing connection that we had, but I know that I just have to live my life. My heart still aches some when I think about the whole situation too intensely. I know now not just what it feels like to have a broken heart, but also what it’s like to fall in love. And it all happened so fast.

This might sound really corny and I know it will in 10 years or so, but I’m pretty sure that on that cruise I found my soulmate. An article I read once said that your soulmate will change your life. I believe it also said that you’d have a sort of deja vu when you meet them, and that you may only be with them for a short amount of time. You won’t necessarily marry them, and I think it even said you’ll meet them by chance.

Ever since I met Tom, I haven’t really cared what other people think too much. I also look at people who aren’t my so-called “social status” alot differently and open-mindedly. Everything else pretty much fits the bill. I just wish so badly that I could see him one last time.

—–

Before even reviewing this journal entry and the few others that came immediately after meeting soulmate Tom, I had an unbearable urge to queue up some good old Dashboard Confessional–and I did. This act’s first two albums, and especially his breakout The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, have a home in my heart that truly cannot be touched. I remember every word to every song after going years without listening . It just became a part of my soul at this point in my life.

So Little Allison was a little extreme in her reaction to this short affair with soulmate Tom, but let’s give her as break; she was a hopeless romantic who hadn’t felt feelings thrown her way in years, if ever, and here was this relatively mature guy who openly expressed (out of relative maturity and age-appropriate hormones) that he liked her. As you’ll see over the next few posts, my male peers at that time were just beginning to test the waters of love and sex, and so naive little me was about to get a strong taste of reality in the oncoming weeks.

Even as an adult, I have looked at this event as a major positive influence on the rest of my life, particularly in the case of relationships I have taken on, fought for and simply had the otherwise impracticality to pursue from the start. Losing someone I felt so instantly connected to laid the foundation for snagging the digits of my high school sweetheart, who lived an hour away from me at best (not to mention we could not even drive at the time), who then set the highest standard for love and respect I could ask for in a partner. This episode certainly brought about some hardships–the unresolved ending to our friendship allowed my 14-year-old self to carve out some serious illusions of what would have been had we simply been able to stay in touch. But, as an eternal optimist, I prefer to look at the good losing Tom encouraged me to do, despite the likely reality that he never thought much of me after we parted ways.

So let’s talk about soulmates. It’s pretty clear that Tom was not one of those but rather a major catalyst to setting free my animal need for romantic partnership. Little Allison was a ham for many years, on all physical and personality-based levels, but she did grow into a womanly figure right around this time (thanks much to the assistance of a wonderful weight-loss tool known as a “pallet expander,” a device meant to further separate back teeth which also prevents 65% of food in the mouth to be swallowed).  This descent into a healthy weight range along with the quickly approaching 8th grade semi-formal, and no doubt Little A’s sudden Don’t Give a Fuck attitude, combined with the energy of a thousand raging mid-pubescent male hormones to make it suddenly seem I was the center of attention. I would quickly learn that not all boys, especially those about to finish their last year of middle school, were to be trusted with my slightest feelings in the way that wonderful, respectful and friendly Tom had been.

At 23, now immersed in a relationship that is mutually held to the highest standards of love and respect, I can recall two times between then and now that I have called someone my soulmate. One of these was constructed of an extreme, lifelong delusion in the form of a family friend I have no romantic experiences with to base such a claim on. The other, my wonderful high school boyfriend, did not turn out to be that One, although if I had made different choices several years ago he certainly could have been. This is where soulmates are distinguished: they are made out of choice, by both parties, and over long periods of time. I believe what I read ten years ago is an incomplete thought, rather we can have many experiences that connect us on the deepest level of the soul, and your soul-mate is the one you choose, who chooses you, to partner up for the long haul. As someone who has opened herself to others to a fault, I know that while many are willing to know the soul, there are very few–perhaps only one–who will hold it and love it as a part of their own being while you do the same.