Just because

I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy since last week but I still couldn’t get over it. Supposedly, I’m to read another novel that Polar Bear suggested, yet I caught myself relating every single thing in my life to those novels by Suzanna Collins. Like today, it suddenly dawned on me that Collins might have written the trilogy as a metaphor, something that resembles the real world. And since the story is actually meant for teenagers, she probably intends to warn them that adulthood is just like being in the arena. Everyone in the real world is tribute. And just like the tributes who kill each other in order to survive, we sometimes have to ‘shove’ others out of our way in order to stay on the line. And what makes it even sadder is sometimes we do it unintentionally. We are goaded by situation, and we act just to defend ourselves without realizing that by doing so we've cut down someone else's life support. We don't mean to be mean, situation makes us. It's like choosing whose neck to save, our own or others. It's like being the last tribute standing in the arena, a price on other tributes' heads.

Gone are the days when ice cream and toys are the only things that matter. Innocence has flown away long before we even realize it. Adulthood is an arena where one's survival matters the most. A place where paranoia becomes our bestfriend, where we unsheathe our weapon, ready to slit others’ throat before they have the chance to do so.  It’s a terrifying place; I wish I were still a baby. I don’t want to think about how scary the world can be. I don’t want to grow up yet. I want to chase butterflies and watch thousand rainbows; laugh with the people around me without worrying that they are pointing dagger at my back. The thoughts of being in ‘the arena’ make me relate well to Katniss’ fear of having children. She doesn’t want to start a family because she doesn’t want her children go through ‘the reaping’, a ceremony where tributes are chosen and sent to the arena. I couldn’t bear the thought of bringing up my children just to be drawn in the reaping, and then are sent away to be slaughtered. I’ve been asking myself, how could I protect my children when I myself, is barely surviving?

I wish I would be like Peeta, who fights to maintain his own identity; to keep his purity of self; to stay being human when the game turns him into some sort of monster that he’s not; to show that he’s more than a piece of the game.

It’s amazing how a novel turns me into some kind of philosopher that I never thought I am.

-Miss B-