Member-only story
I Never Thought I Was Waiting For My Romeo
And I never wanted to be someone’s Juliet.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet had a renaissance back when I was still in high school in the 2000's. You can probably blame Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight for the resurgence, but I always hesitated to romanticize the Shakespeare play, no matter how much the books I read seemed inspired by the idea of forbidden, tragic young love.
How can you highlight the story as a grand love story when they both — spoiler alert — end up dead by the end? That didn’t seem very practical.
Even so, I knew some girls who wanted their Romeo’s — especially if these boys declared steadfast, unyielding love. Me? I think I just wanted the guise of someone who would understand me, flaws and all, no matter if the relationship fizzled into platonic companionship.
Only later, as I matured a bit more, did I realize the ol’ tale of Verona was a cautionary tale and not a blueprint for the kind of love to which everyone should aspire.
Of course it’s heady and exhilarating to be in that first phase of a new love story. The butterflies, the spark, the nervousness — these are the things that tend to come up, no matter how young or old the couple is. It’s easy to see how someone could get lost in all those sensations.
