We Thought We Were Soulmates Because We Saw Sound in Colors, Then One DNA Test Explained Why We Matched So Perfectly

My mom called that night and asked if I was sure. I told her I wasn’t sure about anything anymore, but we had to face this together.

The week leading up to the meeting dragged so slowly I thought I might lose my mind. I practiced the phrases Cormac taught me every morning in the shower. Melinda quizzed me on my boundaries.

Saturday finally arrived. I put on the most normal-looking outfit I could find because I didn’t want to look like I was falling apart, even though I absolutely was.

My parents picked me up at noon, and we drove there in silence.

The private room was in the back of the restaurant. When we walked in, my boyfriend and his mom were already sitting at the table.

The awkwardness hit me like something physical.

We all sat down, and nobody knew where to look. My boyfriend and I made eye contact for maybe half a second before both looking away.

His mom started talking first. She apologized to my dad for the years of silence. My dad responded with his own apology. They went back and forth like that while I sat frozen in my chair. My mom reached under the table and took my hand.

Then my boyfriend’s mom turned to me. Her eyes were already red from crying.

She apologized directly to me and said she never imagined her fight with my dad would hurt anyone else, especially not like this. Her voice broke on the last part.

I could feel everyone’s pain in that room, and it made holding myself together almost impossible.

The parents kept talking for what felt like forever, going over the details of their fight and how they both wished they had handled it differently.

Then my boyfriend finally spoke.

“We need to talk about what happens with our relationship.”

The entire room went quiet.

My dad looked at me with so much sadness that I realized he was scared of what I was about to say. I took a deep breath and forced the words out. I said I didn’t think we could continue dating, even though we both still had feelings for each other.

His face crumpled when I said it.

But he didn’t argue. He didn’t try to change my mind. His mom nodded slowly like she had expected that answer all along. My mom squeezed my hand so hard it almost hurt.

Then he cleared his throat and asked if we could at least stay friends eventually, after we had both had time to process.

I had to be honest, even though it killed me.

I told him I didn’t know if friendship was possible because right then, everything about him hurt too much.

The silence after that felt thick and heavy. My dad looked devastated. My mom was crying quietly. His mom had her hand over her mouth. He was staring at the table like he might fall apart.

Finally I said we needed complete separation for now. No contact while we both processed and healed.

He nodded, even though I could see exactly how much that cost him.

We all stood up to leave because there was nothing else to say. As we were walking out, he caught my arm gently and whispered that he was sorry. His voice sounded destroyed.

I told him I was sorry too, because none of this was anyone’s fault, but it was destroying us anyway.

My parents drove me back to campus. None of us talked on the way.

When I got back to my dorm, I locked the door and cried for three hours straight.

Then my chromosthesia made everything even worse, because every single sound became a trapdoor into memory. The coffee machine in the dorm lounge sounded rose gold, and I remembered that was what he said my voice looked like. A girl laughing in the hallway created golden bursts, and I remembered his laugh looked the same.

I started wearing headphones everywhere just to block out as much sound as I could. Even music hurt, because we used to share songs and compare the colors we saw. I stopped listening to anything we had listened to together, which wiped out about half my playlist.

I stopped going to places we used to go too. The music building. The dining hall. The library study room we had claimed as ours. The bench outside the science building where we had our first kiss.

Melinda tried to help by suggesting new places to eat and study. We tried a different dining hall across campus and a coffee shop in town I had never been to before. But everywhere still felt wrong without him. The colors were wrong. The sounds were wrong. Everything reminded me of what I had lost.

I was going through the motions of being a college student, but I felt like I was underwater.

Classes happened around me, but I could barely focus. Melinda started walking me to my sessions with Cormac twice a week because she was worried I wouldn’t go otherwise, and she was probably right.

At one session, I asked Cormac why it hurt this much when technically we hadn’t done anything wrong.

He leaned forward with his hands folded and told me I was experiencing complicated grief, the kind where you are mourning a relationship that has to end even though love still exists on both sides. He explained that the biological relationship didn’t erase what we felt or make our connection less real, but it did make continuing impossible for psychological and social reasons.

The explanation made sense.

It just didn’t make it hurt less.

Two weeks later, Svetlana cornered me in the dining hall and told me I needed to start moving forward. She knew a guy in her biology class who thought I was cute and wanted to set us up. I told her I wasn’t ready, but she insisted nobody ever feels ready and sometimes you just have to push through fear.

Against my better judgment, I agreed to meet him for coffee.

The date was fine. He was nice enough. He talked about his major and his family and asked questions about mine. But the entire time, I was comparing him to my ex. His laugh didn’t create the right colors. His voice sounded flat and dull instead of emerald green.

When he made jokes, I smiled, but inside I kept thinking about how my ex would have made them funnier, sharper, better timed. The guilt sat heavy in my stomach because this guy didn’t deserve that.

After about an hour, he suggested we take a walk. We ended up by his car in the parking lot, and he leaned in to kiss me goodnight.

Panic hit me like a physical force.

I stepped back fast, mumbled something about needing to leave, and practically ran to my car. He called after me asking if he had done something wrong, but I was already gone.