Posted on April 11th, 2009 in
Uncategorized
Once upon a lifetime ago, a naïve and fairly immature girl and the boy she put on a very high, if not crooked pedestal met, and fell in love. Happily ever after was the obvious plan, but not for this pair of star crossed lovers. Instead they chose very different lives from one another, through one decision after another, they parted ways, always keeping the other in the back of their 
minds. Living vicariously through the imagined if not made up hope they placed in the other, onward they went with their lives.
You see for this Romeo and Juliet, the imagined reality was easier to access than to actually reach out and take what they wanted. For a decade, the oh so in love pair ignored each other completely, thought about each other occasionally until the occasion was frequent enough to call hourly, and then put their pens to paper and wrote the other, causing a flurry of emotion to bubble up, envelop them as wholly as an envelope of the heart can, only to be torn to shreds in the act of opening the heart. Rinse, lather, repeat.
It was in each other they had placed their futures. It was in each other’s hands and hearts they had imagined their only successes. They of course were wrong, because as the story plays out Dear, Dear Reader, you will see that Romeo never did get the girl. Instead, Juliet married Benvolio, and raised three boys due to what seemed like a minor “mishap” during the “Romeo killed himself” phase. When Romeo rose to the occasion, alas, his fair Juliet had shacked up with a kind and sweet soul , fret with Baby Mama Drama.
So what is it that glued two souls that had chosen to live their lives apart, time and time again – together? 
Hope. Fear. Love. Kindred Souls. Intellectual Stimulation. The happiest moments they could remember. The promise of more, when they got around to it.
Around the bend of time, Juliet, still married to the quiet and reserved, and very loyal Benvolio decides to make an effort to both take what she wanted but in a healthy balance with reality. She asks the gallant Romeo to be her friend. Just her friend. And, the gallant Romeo says no. Absolutely not. Well maybe. He’ll think about it. Perhaps, and then finally the “I’ll get back to you, Juliet.”
Juliet got sick of waiting. She got really tired of looking for happiness in something that was entirely not accessible to her. So, she grew the hell up and realized that happiness isn’t something someone can give to her. It’s already in Juliet. In fact, it was in her all along. Juliet realized that knowing Romeo, truly knowing him, and sharing part of her life with him was beautiful and engaging, and entertaining and a very intense learning curve for her…that was happiness. But she also learned that having someone who is important to her disappear didn’t make her less than a person. It didn’t make her less smart, or fun, or engaging or entertaining. She found things to laugh at. She found solace in her friends, and most importantly in herself.
She learned that this storybook character was just that. A character in her life, for as long as she read that story. Reading the same story over and over and over again over a lifetime with no prequels, sequels or afterword started to not make sense anymore. Especially when she offered to co-author a new story. You can’t co-author a story, with no co-author. By definition, that’s considered an author. So, Juliet went about writing her own story, and hopes that someday soon she can add Romeo’s character back into her story, but is aware and content that if Romeo’s character has written himself right out of her story, her story will continue, nonetheless.
