DEAR JULIET

Dear Juliet,

Your city truly stole my heart. If there was a definition of true love and adoration, it would be your city and your people. Everyone may read about the city of love as it pertains to the story of Romeo and Juliet- but I witnessed a kind of love from your admirers that’s truly everlasting.

Side note: before visiting your city, I had mixed feelings about your love story. I admire a love that is so consuming, I really do. But to leave your friends? Your family? Tricking them for a boy who just days earlier was in love with another woman? Maybe I need a little bit more of a reckless give-it-all-you-got kind of attitude when it comes to love, BUT giving up your life for a boy is a foreign concept to me- call me crazy. It’s your story though and I’m gonna let you live (even if you didn’t).

I digress.

Because this was the city of love, I decided to dress in all black. Call me dramatic if you wish but I take my literature very seriously. Your story, after all, is a tragedy. My outfit was very fitting for the story of Romeo and Juliet: a love so vicious and a hatred so strong that it took the lives of two young people. So, I mourned you.

Beginning the Verona venture, I thoroughly believed I would be overwhelmed with the amount of cheesy red heart decorations or the attempts of businesses to shove love in your face or the number of enamored couples visiting over Valentine’s weekend. This wasn’t the case at all- quite the opposite actually. Everyone in Verona was enamored, not so much with their own love, but with the love that the city represented. This undying, unnatural, ready-to-die-for kind of love. It was all over the city: Castlevecchio housed the greatest of those loves in emotional paintings of Christ, Juliet’s tomb housed this love within a wishing well to throw your hopes into, and Juliet’s House showed this love retold throughout the years.

So much hope and adoration from a fictional tragedy- it intrigued me.

I didn’t understand this love until we visited Juliet’s House. This “house” was no doubt created as a tourist trap (a more cynical form of love: money) but throughout the years it has come to represent so much more than that. Juliet, you are truly adored. The number of lost, hurting, or searching souls asking for your advice- it was breathtaking. Letters about continued fortune in love, help in love, help in heartbreak, asking to be blessed by love, asking to be shown love, asking to forget love…

It is no surprise to me that love is everyone’s favorite topic to lush, rant, and brag about; however, never have I seen so much love for a love so tainted. Never have I witnessed such majesty for a woman who laid it all on the line for a boy.

And it’s really true- you don’t see a “Romeo’s house” or “Romeo’s Tomb” or “this is where Romeo climbed up a vine to kiss fair Juliet." So why you, Juliet? What is it about you that has everyone in the world in constant pursuit of an undying LOVE? Now, don’t get me wrong. I am 100% the “go women! We are the rulers of the world!” kind of feminist, but this is not the story I would tell to my daughter as an example to be a strong and bad-ass woman. Or should it be?

This question loomed on me as we walked around your city. Would I want my daughter to be like you? Is this kind of love not as defeating as I think? To have the courage and- for lack of better words- the balls to die rather than live a life without love?

Alright, you convinced me. You were a bad-ass. And after a full day of seeing this fantasy love up-close-and-personal, I finally understood it. People didn't admire you because you found this life-ending, never-failing, passionate love affair with this boy who was larger than life. They admired you because it’s a much stronger attribute to love whole-heartedly than to miss out on love for fear of losing it all. People wish they had this kind of love, devotion, and passion in any form of love; but, instead of finding it- they live vicariously through you. And some are too strong-headed on the idea that they could potentially become you- so madly in love that you would rather die than to feel the pain that heartbreak inflicts. But, you found it. You loved. You died for it. And you've become an encourager to those who have become hopeless to it.

So it goes: thank you Juliet. For not asking for this responsibility, but being the greatest bearer of the idea of love so powerful that even this life cannot contain it. For reminding us that love is not a weakness, but a strength. For giving hopeless souls an outlet and a shoulder to cry on. For giving life to a fictional story. For turning a tragedy into an undying love.

<3 Amanda