my dreams remind me of an ocean

In my experience, your soulmate is the person who makes you into who you’re supposed to be. The job of a “soulmate” is not an easy one. At times it means holding your beloved while they cry their eyes out, and sometimes it means pushing them so hard that they cry. But it always means being there, willing to lend your ears and your hands at a moment’s notice. It always means putting their wants, their hopes, their dreams before your own. And, most importantly, it means tidying your heart, cleaning out all of the cobwebs and dust bunnies, all of the cracks and exs and fears and insecurities, and making a space for them in it for them, one that they can crawl into when the world is too much to bear.

Though I am only nineteen, I have found my soulmate, and she has found me. You’d think we would have been thrilled and danced off into the sunset—but it’s not that easy. It’s never been that easy for us, and it never will be. There is never a sunset; only a storm.

The love story you’re about to read is admittedly just that, but it is in no way conventional. It’s not routine or cliché. But it is real and true and raw. It will make people angry, furious even, to the point that some will spit and protest and holler and cuss, but, to be clear, that was never the intention.

Sometimes, love sneaks up on you, covers your eyes and waits months to uncover them and whisper its name. But at others, it smacks you in the face and scares the (expletive) out of you before showing you its tender side. It’s worth it in the end, but some of the stings—the stares, the whispers, the taunts—remain. If our love were weaker, it wouldn’t have endured it.

Love comes in different forms as well. I ask you to keep your mind open about love and its subtleties. Love is not only found in mothers and children and boys and girls. It can be different, scandalous.

This is the case for Kyra and me.