Six Months Between: A Rant-ish Ramble
I've seen a lot of commentary dragging Katniss for her supposed treatment of Peeta during the six months between the end of the Games and the start of the Victory tour. Yet her PTSD, depression, anxiety, and passive suicidality (she acknowledges on the opening page that she is tempting danger as she wouldn't be able to outrun wild dogs if they showed) are not acknowledged. Katniss is desperately trying to retain her previous life routine in order to maintain her sanity.
People say "Poor Peeta had to watch Katniss traipsing off to the woods every Sunday with Gale." But what I see is "Katniss only gets to see her best friend one morning a week now." When it used to be many mornings and afternoons. Even the time they do spend together is not the same, there is no ease and she's saying this six months later!
Katniss was robbed of her childhood and has missed out on vital years of forming her identity. She makes it clear in the last chapters of THG that she doesn't know who she is without surviving day to day. She can't even imagine what her life will look like post Games because that is all she's ever done. No one gets to be mad at a trauma victim for their coping mechanism that doesn't actually harm another person. Katniss isn't doing anything wrong by clinging to her former life and what she is actually doing during these six months is spending hours upon hours alone. She is mourning and grieving and trying to make sense of what happened to her with the Games, with Peeta, and not lose the one person who has been her constant for four years. She has been dreading this day for months. She is sitting in her childhood home up until the last possible second she has to greet everyone. So overemphasizing that Peeta would see her traipsing off to the woods with Gale when it's just one morning a week is a gross misrepresentation of what transpires.
It is not Katniss's fault that Peeta got dealt a crap deal in life with a family who abandons him and it's certainly not her responsibility to fill that hole. It was her responsibility to reach out, check on him, and be his friend. She should have done that. They were both at fault for not trying to be there for one another. But what can you really say, they are sixteen. Kids! Of course they are so messed up from everything that they don't know how to handle it right.
She may not be as alone in the physical sense, yes she has some comfort from her family trying to be there for her but the reality is this new life post Games is just as alien for her as it is for Peeta. She doesn't know how to connect or fit in to it and not because her socioeconomic status has changed, it's what she had done to her. Katniss has had an experience that transforms your life in to two distinct lives, almost as if she has been two entirely different people. This is what SC is trying to get us to understand about veterans (and it ties in to why Katniss can't figure out her emotions and actions in the Games re: Peeta). You can not reconcile one with the other and just get on with life. Expecting them to do so is preposterous. They become paralyzed by the dichotomy of what they had to endure and returning to everyday life. This is what Peeta means by it costs everything you are to be in the Arena. They had to give up who they were and become someone else. How would you be able to recognize yourself after that? How can you say you would not do the same thing Katniss does and cling to what you've always known out of fear?