i wonder how often we meet our soulmates before we actually meet them. how many times we've been in the same lane on the highway, driving next to them. how many times we were in the supermarket at the same time as them, bumping into each other and exchanging a silent "excuse me." how many times we've been at the same park with them as toddlers, not caring that we were playing tag with a stranger.

i wonder how many people meet their soulmates before they're actually soulmates; when they're little kids with sticky hands and curly hair looking at each other from opposite sides of the street. when they're people in the same college class who never speak. when they're teenaged employees and customers at Sephora, being so close and not realizing that their missing piece is right there in front of them, asking what the best mascara is.

i wonder, have i bumped into my soulmate? was it the girl i couldn't stop glancing at while shopping last month, with the sandy blonde hair and endless freckles? the kid in the passenger seat of the car next to me, where our eyes met for a second while waiting for a red light? the boy who picked my twenty dollar bill up for me after i dropped it in line for my ice cream?

i wonder, will i ever even know? these moments, so small and seemingly irrelevant, will never be brought up. once i meet my soulmate, my other half, i won't ask, "hey, were you in New Hampshire on January 17, 2014, getting ice cream with two younger boys? did you look up and see a girl in a bathing suit with a towel wrapped around her waist and sunglasses pushed up into her hair, who blushed when she looked at you? by any chance, was that you?" i won't ask that, i know, because it won't matter at that point. it simply won't matter if we've ever passed each other walking our dogs, or if we went to the same college in the same years and glanced at each other at a lecture, or if we sat next to each other at a Red Sox game once, because we won't have to think so much about the past when we have our futures ahead of us.