if you ever want to be in love, i'm not waiting

I don’t really care about person A and person B who have each other’s names on their wrists and find each other and live happily ever after. I care about a culture where people don’t bother forming romantic relationships with anyone other than their soulmate, where they finally find their soulmate and realize they don’t know how to handle the ups and downs of a relationship.

I care about people who fall in love with someone who isn’t their soulmate and aren’t willing to leave.

I care about queer people who are outed by the names on their arms, about trans people who spend their whole lives worrying that their birth name will be on their soulmate’s arm, then sobbing in relief when it’s not.

I care about people in poly relationships and how that looks.

I care about asexual aromantic people who have a name anyway and wonder if they’re broken or if it’s the platonic soulmate they’ve always wanted.

I care about people who Google their soulmate and are disappointed by what they find. I care about the private detective agencies that rake in cash to help people find their soulmates. I care about the ways non-soulmate couples are discriminated against, from disapproving grandmas to insurance companies that won’t insure someone’s spouse unless they’re their soulmate. I care about teenagers who are devastated that their celebrity crush isn’t their soulmate and what happens when the media discovers a young, unknown person whose soulmate is hugely famous.

I care about the people who never meet their soulmates, whose soulmates died young, whose soulmates have another name on their arms.

ἀστέρων πάντων ὀ κάλλιστος (of all the stars, the fairest)

πόλυ πάκτιδος ἀδυμελεστέρα, χρύσω χρυσοτέρα (far sweeter-sounding than the lyre, far more golden than gold)

τὰν ἰόκολπον (violet-tressed, one with violets in her lap)

ὦ κάλα, ὦ χαρίεσσα κόρα (o beautiful, graceful girl)

The Greeks had this word, right, we have no idea where it came from, it just kinda popped up out of nowhere, and it could mean either apples, cheeks, or boobs. Problem is it looked and sounded *exactly* like another, unrelated word which could mean sheep, goat, or any animal in general really, which must have got confusing if you were a farmer talking about your livestock, but anyway…

Then the Romans, having stolen practically everything else from the Greeks, thought they’d nick this word too, because Latin isn’t confusing enough without throwing in a bunch of loan words. And they adopted it to mean a pumpkin.

Then the English came along and were all like “when in Rome”, and stole it, where it became our word ‘melon’. Which has now come back to mean boobs.