In freshman year of high school, my English class had to read Romeo and Juliet. Then, for extra credit, my teacher made us act out all the parts. As fate would have it, I was Romeo. All the other students with little parts were jealous. They wanted a lead part to read about this love that could survive anything, but I had a slightly different take. I told my teacher that both Romeo and Juliet were idiots. For starters, they fall for the one person they know they both can’t have. Then they blame fate for their own bad decision. My teacher explained to me that when fate comes into play, choice sometimes goes out the window. At the young age of a freshman, I was very clear then as I am (just now I’m more jaded when it comes to this all “love” crap”), that love, like life, is about making choices. And fate has nothing to do with it. Everyone thinks it’s so romantic. Romeo and Juliet. True love. How sad. If both were so stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink a bottle of poison, go to sleep in a mausoleum, that fateful dagger… they deserved whatever they got. Maybe Romeo and Juliet were fated to be together, but just for a while. And then their time passed. If they could have known that beforehand, maybe it all would have been okay. Even now, I believe that for the most part, love is about choices. It’s about putting down the poison and the dagger and making your own happy ending, most of the time. And that sometimes, despite all your best choices, and all your best intentions, fate wins anyway. We find ourselves in in a place way beyond friendship but very far from love at first site, sometimes it takes years before we realize what’s been in front of us all the time. Knowing someone’s life and them yours, knowing each others history good and bad and knowing how each one “works” can be a bad thing at times but on the other hand it can be a place beyond romance, a place beyond comfortable, a place that doesn’t just feel right…it is.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 04:39:46 +0000