There are so many milestones that marked my journey to become the someone I liked. Sounds like a sob story, to go through so many years of life not like ones self, and it may have been, until one day it wasn’t. We all have trials and tribulations that will get us to where we are, some of us just don’t always have a fair balance of both until we learn how to find our own balance.

Who I am within myself is just for me to know. That informs who I am to others. I devoted myself to being the best version of myself at any given moment. I like myself more in some moments than in others, but that’s where growth comes from. The discomfort of letting myself down always guided me to finding a way to uplift myself.

My soulmate always knew when I needed to do the work of lifting myself back up because she was often the catalyst for the feelings of letting myself down. Because I was present with her in a way I was never present with anyone else, from her point of view, I never let her down. But it was in that presence that I so often touched the underbelly of my existence.

I found a quiet inside my own head while in her presence. Her innate gentleness was the wave that I rode toward an internal stillness. In the silence I was able to see life with more clarity. The life we shared and the life I had a way from her. I could see myself more clearly.

She was my mirror. But just like in an actual mirror image, everything appears backward. Left is right and right is left. Just me being me was the me she wanted me to be, the me she needed me to be. But where she saw me as being exactly what she needed, I saw myself as being an obstacle to what she needed. All she wanted me to do was hold the space she gave me. All I wanted to do was step aside and let someone more able to take that space.

Then I would find my way back to the space she left empty for me. And I always found my way back. Always. I struggled because of her. I succeeded because of her. As I poured as much of myself into her, she in turn poured her best self into me.

And then she died. And I was set on a path marked by the unknown. We had been to each other what we were for more than 40 years. Two thirds of my life. Practically my whole adult life. In her death, she took away my quiet. The din in my head made me want to run and hide, to escape. But there was nowhere to turn. My safe space was gone. It ceased to exist with her last breath.

Then she came back to me in dream. She stood silently and just watched. Looked at me in the way she always did. Knowing without being told. And I saw her in the same way. I saw her without being shown. The she put out her arm in an invitation to join her, to go along on a journey. She didn’t want my death. She wanted to show me how to get my life back. How to get back to myself. I reached out and felt the familiar touch of her skin in my hand. The fine hairs on her arm that stood up every time we touch. She wanted me to know she was still alive, just existing on a different plane. And still with me. Guiding me.

Since awakening that next morning, I have been on that journey to The Quiet. I am finding it in degrees. The path is clearing itself and showing more familiar signs of which way to go. The comfortable silence I found with her, I now only experience when I am alone. But I am never alone. She is, and will forever be, here.