A coherent picture that you have drawn here. It confirms the statement that we always take all the worries we have identified with us in our suitcase and therefore escape is unnecessary. May I express a slight doubt that points in the opposite direction?
When you say that you have now understood that it is not a question of running away, but of turning yourself in by getting something done, and that you are introducing what you get done as a new maxim, do you not also confirm the old maxim "the fled"?

Why do I say this? Because I stumbled upon the word "conquer." If you set the conquered as opposed to the fugitive, what other perspective does that possibly leave out?

My question is whether you consider something done when you have conquered it, subordinated it to you? The image of the man lifting weights confuses me in this context. Is the athletic body now, instead of running, designed to lift and carry? But what about the load? Does it remain the same and is now compensated by stronger shoulders instead of faster legs?

Is the joy felt by you because the load can now be carried by you? But how can you make others see pleasure, with a straight face and a raised chin? What does it mean to show a straight face? This formulation puzzles me, as I conventionally understand it to mean that someone is not showing his authentic feeling of pleasure, but a face of determination, which I find difficult to interpret.

But I have now deliberately played dumb, because I could also interpret that what was considered a burden can now be transformed into a cheerful task. Where do you let me recognize your cheerfulness?

In all this I also experienced your story as a child, the lost flip flop stands for n possibilities of each of us experienced in this way. However, I would like to offer you a re-framing of this childhood experience: The fear of the scolding that made you go into hiding. After the agonies of your boyhood loneliness, you returned to the lion's den, didn't you? To compare your courage with your hunger for food diminishes that courage, for therein lies the precious insight that we as human beings cannot survive alone. You didn't tell us what thunderstorm came over you at home. But my question is: besides the violence of anger, did you feel anything else? Undertones of uncertainty, signs of the slightest affection in the echoes of thunder?
After all, you survived. Isn't that really something remarkable?