Watch the play "Ordinary People".
It tells about two high school students who love each other, separated and reunited until they graduated from college. It is a very beautiful TV series. It is difficult for me to regard it as a romantic drama. It talks a lot about the inevitable dull pain of growing up. The girl comes from a wealthy but very indifferent family. The elder brother wanted her to die, and the mother not only didn't protect her, but also repeatedly let her understand the difficulty of her elder brother. No one loves her, she considers herself ugly and worthless. She fell in love with the most popular boy in school. Although this boy is the focus, he is different from other lively boys. He loves to read; he feels lonely, but he is afraid of losing the group he belongs to. He almost hides his favorite part-including the girl he loves. Because what he loves is incompatible with his environment. He does the "right" things that he thinks others think he should do. He invited the most popular girl in school to attend the prom. He didn't deal with her in school, the two of them were secretly dating-and she acquiesced in all this. Two lonely and fragile children love each other, they cherish each other, but they don't know how to cherish. The growth process is accompanied by huge hesitation and uncertainty about the self. So they are like Princess Pea's bed, torturing each other. When I watched it, I screamed in my heart countless times, and it is hard to meet a confidant in my life. Later I thought, this is part of their lives.
Cornell: The loneliness that can't be integrated, the hometown that can't be returned
Before the boy was about to graduate from college, he went to see a psychotherapist. He said to the effect that I felt lonely when I was in high school. I thought I was admitted to the big city, came to the best school, and met more interesting people, which would solve this loneliness; but after I came, I just found that everything has become better. Oh no. I don't like it here. However, I look back at my hometown and never go back.
Cornell's loneliness is always there. He has something he loves, reading literature and writing; but he can't express it in the small group of high school. So he said "My head is empty". He is afraid of losing friends, losing their expectations of him, and he cannot allow self-expression.
He is really different. He walked out of the small town, but everything became difficult. He often can't face his inner gloom, so he should find the "right" girl to fall in love, so that he feels "normal", like a "normal person" as he should be. He desperately aspires to be a "normal person" at all costs-including hurting the girl he loves.
I first experienced this kind of "desire to be normal" and feel nowhere. Tao Zhe had a song "Small Town Girl". At the beginning, I said that when a girl from a small town came to a big city, you must have heard this story. You feel lonely, when you come to a better environment, a group of more people, you begin to feel weak.
Can't find my place, eager to integrate and resist. So I want to be the same as others at all costs. This process is painful, so I often want to return to the familiar old position, looking at my hometown and discovering that I can't go back to my hometown again. You can only move forward bravely, but you have to experience intense loss and loneliness.
My generation in my family has all gone from small cities to larger cities, distant countries. While wandering, I often meet similar people: I haven't been able to adapt to the new culture and environment, but I can't return home spiritually. A friend of mine described this group as "cultural intermediaries." Later, I realized that this is a very common state in life. When you relocate, enter a new field, and a new environment, you often think that you have taken a step and reached a new level: a new job, a new one. Ranks, new promotion opportunities, etc. You think what you get is the truth, but opening the door is a longer barrenness and practice. Loneliness is the longest companionship and homework among them.
Marianne: I'm lying here, you can do anything to me
For her, pain means being loved. She doesn't think she deserves to be loved, she thinks everything she gets from love should be punished.
A girl who enjoys sexual abuse once described it like this, saying that only in being disciplined and painful can I find the feeling of being completely loved. So she can't get herself into a relationship that is respected and loved. With the exception of Cornell, she enters love almost casually and indiscriminately. She is familiar with pain and the intimacy that discipline brings.
She had a different experience from Cornell-Cornell respected and took care of her feelings. She is not familiar with these. She often proposes: I will do anything for you. People look for their intimacy after adulthood. If the growing trauma is still there, they will inevitably fall into a repetitive relationship pattern- I have survived in that (punished) relationship, where there is a familiar smell, There is something that symbolizes love to me. It's like "going home".
The pain that must be experienced on the way to find yourself
The two gave each other long-term tenderness and company in each other's difficult moments. The girl encouraged Cornell to pursue her inner desire. She recognized the "darkness" in Cornell's heart and made him face himself. At the end, Cornell summoned the courage to decide to go to New York alone—a larger city to pursue his ideals and do what he aspired to do. Cornell repeatedly said to the girls: I don't need you to do anything for me. I want you to act according to your own wishes. You deserve a better life. And this makes the girl finally have the ability to say to him at the end, you go to New York, and I will stay. And we are going to be OK. They look after each other on the long path of growth and make each other better people. The dull pain is still there, and the pain caused by growth will remain as usual. Presumably Cornell still has to often face his inner self-confidence and loneliness in a new environment; girls often have to be aware of and understand the urge to hurt themselves.
This is the life of each of our ordinary people.
We often fall into our own darkness; when we encounter things we desire, new opportunities, we cannot fully enjoy the good things, and we have to take out our inner self and reshape it in a new environment. The pain is small and dense, but we are in this re-molding, from the desolate feeling of loneliness, knowing that there is no way out, and muster the courage to move forward. Slowly we become better people. A more comfortable person.
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