Finding My Soul Mate

Everyone always talks about soul mates. Whether or not one believes in them or in true love, love at first sight, all of that, it's all a question of faith, until it actually happens.

I know it sounds dumb, but I now believe in all of it, but not as a chance thing. I believe that God has created that perfect person for everyone, and if you trust in him and stay on his path, he will bring the two of you together.

This actually happened to me! It has been something I have been patiently waiting for for a long time, here is the tale:

It all started with my roommate's interactions with a few of my residents. You see, they all grew up together and know each other from living up in Sacramento. They would exchange stories around me and after a while there seemed to be a pattern. Their best stories involved my resident Abby's Sister. After I had heard about 4 stories staring Sheley and seen about 5 different Facebook Wall Videos of the girl, I decided, her and I should be friends, so that I could put a better face/personality to the stories on a personal level.

It all started when my sister found out that her apartment was directly above a few of my good friends from church back in Sacramento and diagonal from Mike who was a friend from high school. I was really excited that I knew most of Abby's neighbors and most people who I was most looking forward to seeing while I was visiting would be very close by. Mike and I started getting back in touch around mid-summer and we would talk on Facebook and text every now and then. I remember the first time Staphon was mentioned by Abby was when Mike and Staphon were in some sort of fight over twitter and they brought my sister in on it. I immediately thought that this guy was pretty funny and awesome. I would randomly hear more stories from Mike about Staphon and I knew I needed to meet this guy. One day he added me to Facebook with a message that said something along the lines of "I've heard tons of stories about you such as.....and I think we need to be friends." So, of course, I accepted his request and I started sending him videos and chatting with him. I couldn't wait until we would finally meet face-to-face.

Events happened and eventually, there was finally a weekend that I would be around, and she would be visiting, and I would finally get to meet her in person, as opposed to our random interactions on facebook. We were both excited to finally meet each other because we had already realized that each other was "awesome".

The first weekend in October when I went down there, I was so upset that Staphon wouldn't be there! He was going on a trip to Yosemite and I was just so upset. But, conveniently I was also going down the following weekend and we would finally get to meet.

That night I had a date with Aubree, that had been my thanks for her taking my shift cover, and at the end, I walked into my apartment and sitting on my couch was Sheley with her friends Sarah and Guiness. I saw her and my honest first impression was, "Ok, who are these two people in my apartment. Probably Sheley's friends." Not thinking at all that it was weird to see Sheley, that I had never actually met her in person because she was just so familiar to me. But then my brain kicked in and I realized it was SHELEY!

When I first got to Azusa, I was hanging out with my sister and Mike in Mike and Staphon's apartment and I was wondering where Staphon was because I was very anxious to meet him. Mike told me that Staphon was on a date and would be home later. I remember the total pang of jealousy that went through me at that point, but at the time I didn't know why. When he finally came through the door and I realized who it was, we made eye contact and I jumped up from the couch and gave him a huge hug, not caring that he was coming home from a date and that the girl was standing right behind him.

Later that night, we had been hanging out for a while, and everything we had said was just spot on a perfect and we were completely in sync. It was when we were talking about Serenity, when she asked if I saw the movie and I got to look completely cool and tell her that I was there opening night at the premiere of the movie. She jumped off the couch and hugged me and that was when I realized that I liked this girl, and so the tests begun.

That night was the first time I realized that we had so much in common. I had brought Firefly down because he had asked me to, but I hadn't realized that he had already seen it and wanted it for Mike. I was so psyched that he knew about Firefly and had seen Serenity at midnight the night it came out that I jumped up again and hugged him.

However, during that night, I said something about track and she looked at me with a confused look, not knowing about my track career, which was weird to me seeing as how that's what EVERYONE here at school thinks of me and "Track". It was then that Abby yelled out from the kitchen "You guys keep forgetting, YOU DON'T KNOW EACH OTHER." and the two of us looked at each other and I'm pretty sure we were both thinking, "Yeah we do! YOU DON'T KNOW!"

Staphon and I had spent plenty of time talking about random stuff but nothing really about ourselves so we really didn't know much about the other person. Abby would constantly shout things like "YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER!" Which, of course, was a total lie because we absolutely did. Didn't we? Not really.... But we didn't mind because we knew this was just the beginning. What it would turn into, I don't think either of us really knew.

But we really didn't and at that moment, I felt this needed to be corrected.

After she left, I really was sad. I kept singing “Aint no Sunshine when she’s gone.” and told her to come back, but it was inevitable. So I decided to find out about her. At first it was just in conversation, but then I decided to take it a step farther and found one of those 100 question quizzes. I sent it to her, and then filled one out for myself, and after we exchanged I knew she was perfect, though I was skeptical.

When I went home, I got some messages and pictures and videos from Staphon telling me how much he missed me. He kept singing the song "Ain't No Sunshine When She's gone." I laughed and thought it was cute but didn't really think anything beyond that. However, the more we talked, the more I started to like him. I would tell my mom about things that she would say and she started asking me if he liked me and I kept saying, no, no, that's just his personality. However, I had no idea. I was hoping that he liked me, but I had no idea for sure. Finally, he sent me a 100 question survey to fill out so that we could get to know each other more. The further I read his answers, the deeper I fell. I knew that I really, really liked this guy but I had no idea how he felt about me. I was probably just one of his resident's little sisters and we would go through a phase and that would be the end of it.

I pulled out my relationship journal, the one I had to write in Freshman Writing Seminar, and I compared her to my list of the perfect woman. She hit ever single qualification! Not just 4 of them, not all but one, but EVERY SINGLE ONE! No one had ever come even close to getting a perfect score, not without some tweaking like “Oh well maybe she likes some video games, like wii, but I’d have to coax her into it.” No, she PLAYS them in her own spare time!!! “Her eyes are kind of nice.” NO, HER EYES ARE BEAUTIFUL! “She has seen all the spiderman movies and liked them alright” NO! SHELEY IS A SUPER HERO!!! “She likes cats but is more of a Dog Person.” SHELEY HATES CATS WITH THE SAME FIREY PASSION AS I DO!!

When I saw the question of what he looked for in a girl, I knew he was the perfect one for me. We had basically filled out the questions with the perfect answers for each other and yet they were honest and we hadn't meant to. Every way he described himself made me realize more and more how perfect he was for me and how he fit all of the qualities that I looked for in a guy. Most importantly, he hated cats. Yup, he was the one for me.

So at that moment, I HAD To have this girl! And just as I was about to turn on my charm and try my hardest to get her to like me... I got a strange reaction. She told me first that she wanted to Marry Me! That I was perfect. What was this... there is no way any girl would read all of that about me and not find anything wrong with it. She was lying! She had to be! Or maybe I didn’t fill it out right... Maybe I was too fake in it. Maybe she was just another Arrianna who saw my accomplishments and thought I would make a great husband, but was not a great match.

We continued to joke around for a long time, including me telling him that we should get married. We had so much in common that it was the only logical solution to our situation. I knew that he was the perfect match for me, even if he didn't see me that way. I was probably just setting myself up for another heart break, but it didn't matter to me at the time. Over the next couple of weeks we had successfully planned out our entire wedding, figured out our lives together and joked around about a million other things. Well, half joked.

So being the silly people that we are, we made an announcement to her sister and friends and told them that we were getting married. Abby yelled and asked me why I was talking to her sister. I laughed and we changed our relationship status on facebook to engaged. It was a joke that I really didn’t want to be a joke at all! But it was too fun an activity to pass up, Abby’s reaction made it so much better.

We told my sister, Karl, and Mike one day that we were engaged as a joke and my sister, of course, freaked out at Staphon and yelled at him for talking to me. We changed our relationship status on facebook to engaged just to seal the deal. Abby was pissed, Mike rolled his eyes and Karl laughed. Or, so I'm told. That night while Staphon was at work, Mike gave me the "Do you really like Staphon or is this just a joke" talk. I didn't want to admit to liking him in case he didn't feel that way about me, so I assured Mike that it was totally just a joke and we were just playing around.


So we kept talking and after about the 6th time each of us had exclaimed “YOU ARE PERFECT!” or “WE ARE SOUL MATES!” or “I WANT TO MARRY YOU RIGHT NOW!” I decided, since I couldn’t be around her to find out anything, we had to go the extra step in finding out our compatibility. I decided we needed to tell each other 5 flaws a day. To my surprise, she was totally ok with it. We both were really sincere and honest with each other AND ourselves and after about 5 days of this, we realized not one of our flaws would get in the way of this!

At this point we were sending more than 200 texts a day and we had talked about everything. We knew everything about each other and I think we both knew what the other was thinking at this time, we just didn't want to say it to keep from getting hurt just in case we were wrong. So Staphon decided that we needed to list our flaws. 5 a day. After a few days and a bunch of in common flaws later, we realized it didn't really make a difference one way or another to us.

Abby had gone home that weekend and when she got back she told me that all Sheley would talk about was me. I smiled at this, and smiled more when Abby asked me what my intentions with her sister were. I told her I was going to pimp her out on the streets for money. Abby said this is what her and her mom figured my over all plan was. I then remembered how awesome her family was. I told Abby what I intended to do and promised her I would keep her heart safe! I tried to keep cool on the outside, but on the inside, all I knew was that I wanted SO badly not to screw this up.

Abby came home the last weekend in October and I felt bad because all I could really talk about was Staphon. Abby was telling me how Staphon wouldn't stop talking about me either, and that gave me a lot of hope. I would smile every time Abby brought up Staphon's name and hope for a story about him. Over the weekend Staphon and I had admitted our feelings toward each other and he had asked me out for our first date which would take place December 4th. Long wait, but that was the next time that we would get to see each other. When Abby went back to Azusa, she gave Staphon the "big sister" talk and explained how things were going to work.

At this point, we had not even talked about dating, we mostly talked about married life, since we were engaged according to facebook, it was a lot of fun and got me really excited, but I knew we couldn’t just skip a step, even when we talked about having our wedding in the Fortress of Solitude (the set from the Superman Movie) and that we could have Dogs, really cool awesome Dogs (one named Malcolm Reynolds, One named Anaura, and one Name Krypto who would wear a red bandanna) , and a hedgehog (named Sonic and she knew EXACTLY who that was and said she wouldn’t have it any other way) and live in a place with lots of trees and 4 seasons, and... etc. HOWEVER, I could not wait, and I was on the verge of asking her on the phone, but I knew, I KNEW when I asked her to be my girlfriend, it had to be in person, and it had to be EPIC because what fun is going out with someone if you don’t have an amazing story to tell about how it happened, or at least have a cute tale.

Staphon and I knew all about our married life and what we wanted in the future, including where we would get married, where we would live, our pets (dogs and no cats, with, of course, a hedgehog), kids, and what would do with our lives, but we had never discussed the now. Talking about what was going on now made everything so much more real. And painful since we were so far away from each other all the time. I didn't know what we were calling each other at this point. To a few friends, to avoid confusing, I referred to him as my boyfriend, but I wasn't sure if that's what he really was or not. Saying that we were dating just didn't seem to cover it.

It was her Idea and a perfect one it was, to meet up in SLO, which was 3.5 hours from here, and 3.5 hours from where she is. The plan was to spend the whole day together! Every time we tried to think of a plan, we couldn’t get passed how much we HAD to see each other. I’m not sure if she knew my intentions, but the first thing I did when I got there (an hour late btw... sorry babe.) was to quickly grab my chalk (I was prepared) and write on the sidewalk “Sheley, will u b my GF” (literally, I had like 15 seconds to do all this before I was even more late to meet her across the street, I could tell she was already irritated (it was one of her pet peeves), had I gotten there earlier I would have used full grammar and drawn a picture, but alas... the curse of CPT) and I drew a heart around it, and then I put a bouquet of yellow and red roses on the floor on top of the heart. I ran out to her, gave her a big hug and said “You have to come see this!!!” and dragged her to the other side of the truck and stood her in front of the truck. She said yes and then we ******* SHOOK HANDS ******* and then decided to go get some food.

On Halloween night I came up with idea for the two of us to meet in San Luis Obispo which was exactly 3.5 hours away from Danville and Azusa. We would meet the following Saturday and spend the day together. We never really made any set plans for what we were going to do because neither of us knew the area very well and we had no idea what we would be up for. The night before we met we finally figured out a meeting place and the following morning I got there at 9 (when we were supposed to meet) and he was an hour late. I was pissed. Tardiness is one of my biggest pet peeves and on our first date he was an hour late. Not okay. However, right when he got there and I was about to chew him up, he picked me up in a huge hug and then told me to come to his car because he had something to show me. On the ground in chalk was written "Sheley, will u b my GF" with a heart around it and two dozen beautiful roses laying next to it. I laughed and gave him a hug and told him that I would, of course. And after ***********SHAKING HANDS******* I finally chewed him out for being late. I don't think he'll do that again.

The rest of the day was absolutely splendid and a blur and made me never want to let go of her (I literally held her hand 80% of the day, the other 20% consisted of bathroom breaks, eating, and kite flying... yeah, we flew a kite! yes, it was a Superman kite.) She let me go into Best Buy, and Game Stop, and she didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable, in fact, she actually looked at things that SHE wanted and helped me find things! It was the perfect day!

The day went WAY too fast and after getting breakfast, we shopped around at random electronic and game stores and just walked and often got lost. We had lunch at this sea food place and ate the only sea food I'll actually go near. Clam Chowder. After that we flew his Superman kite which I accidentally crashed into the ocean... still sad about that. Staphon insists that he just wanted to visit Aquaman, but I know Lex Luther will be proud of me for succeeding in what he never could.


We ended it off watching *PELICANS* smack their faces into the water, and then watched the stars and pointed out constellations (SHE HAD AN APP ON HER PHONE WHICH SHOWED THEM ALL! How PERFECT!)

We sat on a bench around sunset and watched the ocean as all the pelicans slammed themselves into the water head first. A bunch of seals then started swimming around as it grew dark. We spent the next few hours just talking and looking at stars which my awesome app on my phone that shows all the constellations. It was the perfect day. The only downside was that it had to end so quickly.


We haven't even been dating a week yet and I already know so much about her and am so happy every morning that I could explode. I don’t want to wait, but I know I have to. I have to finish what God has for me here. We are waiting for her to hear back some news which would bring her down here next semester. I am praying all the time that she gets it and comes to me, I miss her terribly, but I am ever so grateful for technology, even though we both hate talking on the phone, but texting keeps me and her together all day and skype lets me see her pretty face todos los noches. She tries to convince me she’s not perfect, and I know she isn’t completely perfect in the world’s eyes, but I know that God made her perfect for me. Even this week, she has helped keep me accountable by making sure I spend time with God, read my bible, pray, ultimately keep God first, and her second, and she understands that and I do the same for her.

So if any of you are having problems believing in soul mates... Just be patient and trust God. Proverbs 3:5 & 6.