And for all of my unease, I just finished reading the book. I am more satisfied with the story than the movie...I can identify with the struggles with being the cause of death and love, of raging at the unfairness and the helplessness. I still ache that this is all too real; confused by the love and expectation and admiration of many; I am doing what I need to to survive.
I excuse myself to change out of my dress and into a plain shirt and pants. As I slowly, thoroughly wash the makeup from my face and put my hair in its braid, I begin transforming back into myself...I stare in the mirror a I try to remember who I am and who I am not...we were strangers...I did what it took to stay alive, to keep us both alive...that I can't explain...because I don't know myself. That it's no good loving me because I'll never be able to afford the kind of love that leads to marriage, a family, to children?
There's a rub there...I remember feeling that way. I remember the little girl who was going to be a truck driver and drive back and forth across the country with no one else by my cat. I was going to invest my life in a sterile laboratory and spend my days searching for genetic answers to cancer. I was never going to get married, and never, EVER have kids...
Yet here I am...wife and stay-at-home mother.
Oh Katniss...I'm sure in the books, her rebellion and symbology are taken up and DO change her world, because it is fiction. In real life...in real life, she'll be fought over by the two boys who love her and have won her respect and gratitude, marry one of them, have kids, and watch as their names are entered into the fish bowls. That she will learn complaisance.
com·plai·sance (km-plsns, -zns)
- the inclination to comply willingly with the wishes of others; amiability
- deference to the wishes of others
- the quality or state of being agreeable, gracious, considerate
- a disposition or tendency to yield to the will of others
Sometimes it is hard to remember what it is I am supposed to be learning. Sometimes I question if complaisance is correct; the other day Beloved said that learning to say NO and mean is good for me. Sometimes I wonder if it is simply that there are two very individual and very intelligent children who have claimed Über titles in my life.
I recognize how torn I am...Doesn't everyone have dreams that are largely fictional and don't balance well with the demands of what passes for real life? But sometimes individuals overturn the odds, change their life, step out of the rat race and inspire others to at least question the game.
In the movie, as the train pulls into District Twelve, Katniss says, “I guess we go home and try to forget.” In the second book, she says, "If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream."
The pain there is immense. Having survived, the keen desire is just to be "normal," as if that has ever been an option. Simply being able to survive makes it impossible to blend in. Believe me, I have tried since kindergarten and I was tossed in therapy by the time I was in fourth grade. I always stand out, and I am exhausted with the unbalance. I long for my beach or my woods to disappear to when the going gets tough. But there is no real escape, is there? I have to play the game.
Conscious or unconscious, I have been gleening, pruning, simplifying, emptying. I have been clearing space. I have been taking small tastes from possibilities; a class, working out, my branding plans. I am not sure what I am preparing for, but Beloved expressed excitement that it is something big. I remain largely confused and questioning.
What is it about my life that is quite so exhausting?
What can I change?
What is happiness, as *I* define it?
What inspires passion in me?
What do I have to lose?
What do I dare to win?
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