Julieta: a satire
She liked to walk around and pretend she hadn’t been named after a fictional character. That it wasn’t inherent, this instinct to go a little overboard. Because not only had she been named after a fictional character, but a main girl in a play. One so common that the place where her name had been uttered the most was in her school’s drama club.
Her parents had been blessed with a mercurial child and hadn’t wasted the opportunity to name her after a girl who had faked her death for love and subsequently actually off’d herself when she realized her whole scheme might’ve gone a bit too well.
So now when they said things like “Oh, god, you’re so dramatic. You’re so intense.”
She’d respond with something like, “Yes and…? You didn’t seem to have a problem with it until you tried to watch a movie with me or I turned 20 and stayed single.”
Although, considering her namesake it was probably for the best if she never fell in love, right?
They must’ve thought she’d been born, heard her name, opened her eyes and said “Let the chaos unfold”.
As a child she’d been a brawler. Although that wasn’t technically her fault. Not only could she attribute her temper to her name but also to her parents. The Gods must’ve been high the night of her creation, when they blended the tempers of a hyena (her mother) and a dragon (her father). They’d probably also thought it would be hilarious to pour it all into a 5 feet tall, brown skinned body with fluffy hair.
In school, there’d been this guy. A friend actually. He thought it would be hilarious if he came up behind her and used her hands to grope some other guy in the middle of a hallway. Everybody had laughed.
She hadn’t.
She’d kicked him in the shin, made him release her. Elbowed him in the ribs and stopped at slapping him in the face–because they’d been friends.
And she’d never had very many friends. She still wondered why sometimes.
A few years later the anger took a backseat and the sadness took over. It had felt like a tsunami wave perpetually cresting over her head. Looked like it would never crash, until it did. She’d been waiting for it forever, but nobody else had seen it coming.
It would make her reserved and suspicious, but also oblivious. Because, turns out that handsy hilarious guy she’d been friends with in high school?
He had liked her for years. She’d never noticed.
All things considered, maybe she wasn’t the only one who had trouble managing her feelings.
After the tsunami, it wasn’t a speedy recovery and it made her take a year off college. She’d never figured out what she wanted. Life seemed like a pitch black, endless tunnel.
Just like any natural disaster, it made others panic and flee. Our world seems to be attacking itself and it leaves its victims stranded.
When you think about it, it makes sense. Disasters leak money and pain and nobody ever wants to deal with them if they don’t have to. We’re all alone when least we want to, and realizing it takes something away.
Only-children learn to sway when nobody will rock them. If there was something she had left it was self-discipline.
It made her think about her namesake. Chugging down venom also required some high degree of obstinacy. The spirit of the girl perhaps had been invoked as it had been written on her certificate the morning of her birth.
Her name often felt like a joke. Such a tragic, nonsensical story. It followed her everywhere, but it was the romance that people clung to.
Where is he? Where is your Romeo? they’d say.
Much to everyone’s disappointment there had never been one. Maybe there would never be. When she was younger she would’ve never been able to excuse risking it all for somebody else. She’d been too wary fighting for her life.
She started caring less about survival of the fittest the more birthdays she counted.
Whatever happened, happened. If it hurt, she would deal with it.
There was no point in worrying about things that weren’t happening now. So if someone ever came along and she fell in love with them as hard as that girl in that ancient play? Maybe she would do something terrible and insane as a result, too.
Because really, if she only had this one chance to live, why not give it a bit of flair?
She’d told her parents she was a writer. Their reaction had been nothing short of fabulous. Fabulously dismayed.
It probably meant she had some careless choices in her future and plenty more of her “drama” for people to roll their eyes at, but if they wanted to experience life from the safety of a cage, the least she could do was provide some kind of entertainment.
She imagined life would get terribly boring without mistakes. And she’d been waiting too long for her freedom. Until now had she realized it could all start and end with words on a page.
