Share, Trust and Believe in Yourself

Author’s Note: In chapter 14 of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque, there was a diction saturated description of the boys in the middle of a battle and it represented how they really didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they started. No one had told them how gruesome the war would be, because the world had taught them that defending their country was the best thing you could do. I related this to teenage heartbreak. Because, as a really little kid, all your teachers say is to share, trust and believe in yourself, but what do you do when people lie, hurt and make you hate what you are? The connection was really how not everything is what it is made up to be.

Mimic Line: I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself.(55) 

Teenage love has always been stereotyped to: “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH EVEN THOUGH WE’VE BEEN DATING FOR A WEEK, IT’S BEEN A WHOLE WEEK,”. But, that’s generally only the sixth-to-eighth-grade stage, when everyone is crazy off hormones and changing personalities by the minute. But, what people forget is the true pain that comes on later. Once us little kids start to understand a thing or two, or we think we do at least.

Everyone is raised to: share, trust and believe in yourself. You shouldn’t talk to strangers, because you don’t know what they truly want from you. It seems that our kindergarten teachers forget to tell us when those golden rules expire. And that complete strangers aren’t the only people you can’t trust, and also really don’t know anything about. Why didn’t anyone tell us how hard it would be? Why didn’t anyone tell us about the truly evil people in the world? Instead of being taught to trust no one, we were trained to jump to everyone with open arms and hearts. Then, everyone ends up broken and seeks vengeance on the next person that tries to be in their life. I see the spin of the cycle pulling everyone leisurely, painfully, inevitably within it.

Every day there’s a new Facebook update of a freshly shattered heart. Everyone can see the pain in that person. Little girls who thought he was perfect and keep her safe, like she was taught she would be her whole life, are now left crying and hurting and losing faith in the world altogether. Those little girls break the hearts of little boys, and those little boys hurt more little girls. All innocence is being corrupted to younger and younger people. No one deserves to feel the pain of betrayal and lies, but our world sets us up for it.

Beauty is withering and hearts are crumbling. I miss pure happiness of my younger childhood, and when I see little kids around my neighborhood screaming and running from each other in joyful games, I can’t help but think of how they will be running and screaming from life not too long from now.