The good news is I actually don’t believe there’s any one soul mate. Were I to actually find myself in that position I very likely would get over her in high school or something and move to resolve my other issues with life, get my shit together younger, come out at a young age, study more, get into a better school, pick a better major, push my mom to get her headaches checked out sooner… with all that, I’d probably be able to leave Ohio sooner and possibly before I would meet her. But also who would I be then? I certainly wouldn’t date my ex, (and thus might end up homeless after college if I don’t get my shit together earlier), and so I wouldn’t be able to bond over our similar exes. We wouldn’t be able to grow together in the same ways, and so even if we did find each other again she’d become someone different and so would I and I’d still be haunted by memories of a different her.

Also we aren’t monogamous and so I definitely wouldn’t be waiting for her. So there’s a good chance I’d find someone else and marry her. It would be deeply unfair and unwise to self destructively chase after a woman with whom my early relationship involved a lot of making sure we’d both be ok if the other left (we both had bad histories with people attempting codependence and so we forced ourselves into a secure attachment style from my anxious-disorganized and her avoidant).

So yeah soul mates aren’t real, but wonderful loving long term relationships are.