inkskinned:

a world where you can learn your soulmate, but it comes at a price: when a soulmate is revealed to one of the partners, the other partner is denied access to the information - if you know your soulmate’s name, they can’t know yours. 

sixteen year old girls showing up with hopeful eyes only to have the woman in a mustard sweater hand over the empty folder with an apologetic smile. “sorry, they’ve claimed your pair already,” she says. sixteen year old girls who find two names in their folders and add “poly” to their sexuality label. sixteen year olds who haven’t come out of the closet, only to have their parents see the name and be faced with a world of trouble.

frat boys who try to play the same “you’re her, you’re finally her” every night. girl squads who roll their eyes. frat boys who really meet the one on the floor of a dance party and feel their heart slam against their ribs and say “you’re her, you’re finally her,” and the terrible realization they’ll never be able to convince her.

a boy being nineteen and falling for his girlfriend lying about it. being nineteen and completely in love with her when she meets the real one. he doesn’t know if he could ever trust anyone again, until he meets the guy who would become his best friend. he gets married in a chapel and on the wedding night his husband whispers, “you know it’s me, don’t you?” and he says, “of course” because even though he doesn’t know, he knows.

new-age lovers who don’t go for their folders, have no idea if their partner has claimed their heart. they find their soulmates (of course they both wouldn’t go for it - they’re the same in that way) the “old-fashioned” way. a poet’s way, all full of dark romance and hope and the terrible horrible possibility they’re giving up something precious - some of them caving and shaking as they stand in the waiting room at four in the morning because they fell and they fell hard and they need to know and holding the closed folder in their hand and terrified of what they might find in there and being too scared to open it.

dating as a completely casual game before you find “the one,” people who swear off dating because you have to “save it,” religions forming ideas around whether soul-mate marriages are the only ones accepted or if all love is still love even if it’s not sanctioned by a folder. 

you at fourteen with the folder in your hand, staring at their face and with shaky hands. the problem is: if you chase them, what if you ruin it by not letting nature take it’s course? what if you were supposed to meet at a specific time and in a specific place or else your souls won’t be ready for each other? what if because you don’t chase them, you never meet? you, at fourteen, faced with the fact you have to choose between going out and forcing fate’s hand or trusting your heart with something that might not even exist (but then, if fate doesn’t exist, how do soulmates? but then, what if believing they are your soulmate makes this person - who is just ideally compatible - your soulmate? because you become desperate to keep them, because you work for it, because you believe  it? you are fourteen, and your mind is spinning eighty miles a minute and now you’re not even sure you want to meet them). you, at fourteen, looking at the face of the person you’re supposed to love and thinking: i don’t know you at all. you at fourteen, thinking: i can’t wait to meet you, and i hope i’m good enough.

(via babydollrps-deactivated20160129)