The Untold Story of Romeo and Juliet

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For days she cried waiting for her lover to come back, hoping it would all be erased from her memory and that it wouldn't be but a bad dream she would soon wake up from, but he never came. She hoped Romeo would be forgiven and would soon be allowed in her sights again and she couldn't live with the thought that he had been banished. For no matter how terrible his deed was, she still had love in her heart, and that she couldn't help. She couldn't help feeling that her greatest love was taken away from her arms. At night she cried and had nightmares, thinking of all that could and couldn't be. She had nightmares of her lover coming back to murder her and would wake up sweaty and shaky in the middle of the night to find the door tightly locked and the apartment empty - the home that was supposed to be theirs. She never unpacked the boxes, never had the heart to go in the room where it all had taken place again, and just kept that door closed as a storage of bad memories. She kept his pillow under her arms that still smelled like him thinking of the good times and the last time they made love in her bed. It wasn't just a few days before they had exchanged vows of love in that very room. On the wall she kept a sign that reminded her of their love once and she still keeps it today as a reminder to have faith in love "Love is patient, love is kind..." That was also a sign that their love wasn't patient or kind - and that killed her inside. She couldn't bare the thought of life without him, and it wasn't so much that she needed him for no other reason but that she needed their love. If for one second he could believe her and never doubt her love in his heart, maybe they could have been happy. For she never doubted their love herself. Against all expectations, all odds, all opinions, those two had found love. True as the sky is blue and as cheesy as these sayings. They had found love in a hopeless place...And no matter how many evil tongues speak ill of their love, they will always know it was true love.

She hoped there was a priest of some kind, someone that would understand and protect their love, someone that would come up with a solution and tell the two lovers to meet at a church, in secret so no one would know and they could kiss again. Just once more. She hoped they could kiss in the middle of their worst moment and make up forever, love each other forever. If only we could go back in time and even in the harsh moment of desperation I could have kissed him and proved my love to him, and show him inside of my heart, if he could only feel how much love I had to give him, but I gave him all my love (and it was never enough it seemed). I loved him more than myself at times. And if only they could live happily ever after. Then she remembers Romeo & Juliet never lived happily ever after. They died in love, for their love, and that's something they weren't willing to risk. What if they met again and that would be their fate.

Now she lives in her castle with all the things she always dreamed of, but as though she never loved and wondering if she will ever love again. She lives from the memories of their once found love and the smiles they would bring to each other's faces when they first found love. No one will ever understand, no one can ever comprehend what they truly felt, for most people on this earth will never find love and never understand what true love is, and they will go on living without ever feeling what those two lovers felt - just like the untold story of Romeo and Juliet.

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The lovers didn’t speak nor did they mention their love again. They didn’t dare reveal the feelings underlying their rage. For where there’s hate, there’s an equal amount of love. They hated each other because they couldn’t get over their feelings and they had to focus on the reasons that kept them away. They focused on the reasons that still kept them alive. They focused on their careers, on their jobs, on parties, on gatherings, on drinking – because that’s what lovers focus on when they have a broken heart.

Denial only worked so far. She found another man to keep her attention away from her true love since she couldn’t have him - just the idea of contacting him provoked immediate embarrassment and constraint from her family and friends. Everyone surrounding her had instructed she shouldn’t contact him under any circumstance. For lack of better judgement she agreed. She was afraid and alone in her love. She couldn’t find any supporters, any word of comfort or constructive criticism. Love had been shut down. Her heart was out of order.

For a few seconds she even believed she was over the old love. She lied to herself and she was such a great actress even she believed in her own lie. She knew it wouldn’t last forever, but she wanted to enjoy that moment of freedom. She realized her plan had failed. It could only have worked if she could feel that old familiar feeling and maybe forget the history she left behind.

That was the first disappointment, or second taken in consideration it all started with a broken heart. He said maybe at some point they would become exclusive if he ever got there as if she had to be longing for that moment and waiting until he decided to love her, which was clear would never happen nor would she fall in love with him if he never gave their love a chance. That was the first time she began to miss her love, but she still wouldn’t admit it. She went back home to lay in bed alone, waiting for one teardrop to fall on her red sheets. She looked around the empty room with the boxes still untouched and couldn’t bring herself to look at old photos. The time when they still believed in love.

She sat down on her computer to work, edit, YouTube, Facebook, twitter, something. Skype was on and her ex-boyfriend from years ago messaged her. It was like a Pandora’s box of disappointments had been opened at that point. So he told her his story and said afterwards, “Man up.” She replied “I can’t man up because I’m not a man, I can only woman up and that means I become even more vulnerable.” She couldn’t have chosen better words for what was about to come and the dramatic irony began.

Her heart was filled with hope, could it be that she had found someone to fall in love with so she wouldn’t have to drown in sorrow for her lost love. No, of course not. Denial never goes a long way. It’s like going for a long dive and even if you can hold your breath for longer than expected you know at some point you will have to come up for air.

And it was as if a knife crossed her heart once more, the heart that was already in shambles. At that moment she felt as though she joined the losing side of a battle at the finishing end when those at the ground keep getting stabbed to death. One more stab before she went down. And she fell. Once again she fell on her bed and was left to her crying silence. “How much more pain could she endure,” she asked herself in thought. The world was playing a terrible prank on her, why bring all those memories back, all the pain back, after all she had been through. That’s one question that wouldn’t stop and she would keep asking it over and over in her head, why. She fell into her own misery like a cancer patient who has discovered the diagnose and can’t seem to understand the words muttered or read or seen, but can’t accept their fate. Why.

She had a tendency to fall in love with the impossible, hope for perfection and write scenes of movies in her head. She remembered how dramatic her last break-up when her life almost ended and she almost ended her life. Once again she was tired of believing in happy endings. Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy nonetheless.

Til death do us part. Whenever she heard that statement she thought about Romeo and Juliet. Maybe if they hadn’t died they would have asked for a divorce, they would have fallen out of love, they would have cheated, they could have even killed each other. But dying for love was the most beautiful and romantic death a lover could attain.

She thought of every possible death. She thought of Ophelia drowning in the river, Juliet being poisoned and stabbed, Lady Anne afraid for her death. All these women who live to suffer for love. There was something disturbingly attractive about sacrificing your own happiness for a third person. Suffering seemed so romantic to her. She thought about every possible death available to her from fiction books. Her biggest fear was failing at death. So she’d rather stand still suffering, torturing herself with the thought of death and somehow watching the mascara run through her face while her heart was in pieces brought comfort to her.

“Banished, that one word, banished.”

She recited Shakespeare in her sleep, comparing her lover being away to Romeo’s banishment from the kingdom. He had been banished, but even when Romeo killed her cousin, Juliet still didn’t give up on his love. They were already husband and wife and she stood by his side. Would Juliet have told the prince about her lover’s deeds? Would she have turned him in. That made her feel guilty, then she wondered. Romeo would have protected Juliet to death and he only killed her cousin fighting for his friend’s honor. Romeo was an honorable young man. The opposite of her lover.

He was rude, childish, selfish, eloquent, attractive, mean, evil, perverse, vengeful. He wasn’t the love of her life or anything a girl could wish for in a man. He was a project of a man, who hadn’t turn out according to plan. He was a little girl screaming in the body of a teenage boy. He was everything she hated. Everything she was trying to stay away from. He was negative, bitter, jaded, miserable, harsh, self-centered and he fucked well. He reminded her of all the reasons that made her not want to date him and all the reasons she couldn’t stay with him, and she wanted out but she still wanted him. She was always the moth flying towards the lamp and she knew she was flying towards her sacrifice, but she was a romantic and she found death beautiful. He was the murderer and the lover. Just like Romeo. How Romeo and Juliet could have turned out if they hadn't died in love. It was the untold story of their love.