Back then, I used to be a crazy and lonely kid like Max, forgotten by busy parents. Sometimes I woke up and found myself locked in my room, climbed up on the windowsill and cried for the neighbors to come back to my parents. When I was a little older, I locked the door after being reprimanded, and thought desperately and sadly of going back to my grandma's house, feeling that the pair of adults outside the door would never understand me. When she was a little older, after arguing with her mother, she gestured her wrist with a knife, thinking that maybe she would die before she could admit that she was wrong. Later, and later.
Recalling childhood, happy things are always blurred out, and sadness is painted with key symbols.
I also thought about running away from home. The only time I tried was in my sophomore year of high school. The bravery inspired by anger disappeared little by little in the cold night, and finally turned into an empty street. Fear flooded me back home in embarrassment. Maybe I left for too short a time, and my parents didn't come to see me, but they laughed at me for coming back so early.
Tears were mixed with sadness, grievance and shame. The childish dignity I willfully uphold. When I grew up, I couldn't understand the sadness at that time.
But the pain at that time was branded deep in the skin.
Everyone's childhood is like a jar. Pour a little sadness into it. Slowly, the jar is full. Sadness is a special medicine for growing up. The child is poisoned and becomes an adult.
I also drank the bitter wine of growing up that day.
The price of maturity is a perfect smile on your cheeks, no frown when stinged, and time when your heart is broken and hope is almighty. In short, learning how to forget about conditioning. Pretend not to care.
When you're wronged, smile gracefully instead of saying "nobody listens to me" like a goat.
When you're angry, take control and not stop feeling like Carol wants to destroy something.
When jealous, look away instead of speaking viciously like Judith.
Why should we retreat from our innate wildness, forget about direct ways to express our emotions, and engage in the complex social etiquette that adults devise.
Why should we take care of other people's feelings and hide our own sadness?
why why why.
Because we might not be able to live without them.
Because we can injure them, or even kill them, by unleashing our own thorns. In the end we become a person ourselves.
Like max told Douglas to hit an injured goat with a clod, the goat was really hurt. It was supposed to be a game of finding joy, and everyone was frustrated.
I have many friends who refuse to grow up. True, growing up is painful, and it's a one-way trip with no return. What is the end of the road, can it be better than it is now. No one can answer.
But why don't we understand it from another angle. The happy magic that I've been waiting for max to show is hugs, tender hugs. But he didn't. From beginning to end, the boy led his beast friends to do savage and violent attacks. I began to fear the childish ostentation when Carlo tugged Douglas's right hand in a rage.
Even MAX knew that Carlo was out of control.
control.
Words that kids are tired of.
You don't know why we need control until you make a mistake.
Until max tore up the gift he gave to his sister, until max bit his mother's shoulder, until max found the goat's wound.
Growth is not to abandon all childishness, but to seal those wild things. Although they are also precious. But in order to avoid the sadness of Douglas's right hand, we always withdraw our claws and fangs, and tenderly embrace those we love.
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