I just finished reading the book "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" last night, and in many ways I can relate to the main character. (Albeit far from all the ways, I've never drunk alcohol, smoked or done any kind of illegal substances, and I don't really think about girls in that way either, for anyone who has actually read it or seen the film) It's more the way the character thinks that I can relate to. I'm going to try and not spoil it too much, but the whole book is basically a series of letters written to you, the reader, from an anonymous person who calls himself "Charlie". It's really a bit like a diary that someone has decided to show you, and it allows you to really get inside the head of the person who wrote it. Charlie has had a difficult past, and has been suffering from clinical depression, having just come out of a mental health institution to begin his first year of high school in an attempt to go back to something resembling normal life. He goes into this not knowing anybody, and has to attempt to start from scratch, making new friends and just generally trying to fit in and understand the world around him. I think this is probably why this book in particular resonated with me, because in many ways I went through the same sort of thing, albeit without the "clinical depression" part. Charlie spends a lot of time inside his own head, as do I, and so it's easy for me to appreciate how, maybe, if I had grown up in a different situation, we'd have been very similar people. I guess that's why I liked it so much.
I'd recommend the book to anybody who is curious, but with the warning that it is quite graphic in places, and I've not seen the film but the "12" rating on the DVD cover is really not reflected in what you get in the book, and really should have been at least a 15, as the book also assumes you are older than Charlie, the main character, who is 16 (it even says as much: "I'm guessing you do, since you're older") (I just looked it up and it was initially assigned an R rating in America, which was only lowered to PG-13 after an appeal). It's not a very long book, but if you are going to read it, then I will just say stick with it, it can be a bit hard to follow in some places but is definitely still worth reading.
Anyway, the reason I decided to blog about this right now, is this quote:
It's crazy, because I have all these great people surrounding me, but sometimes I feel loneliest in a crowded room, so to speak. What matters to me is not how many friends I have, what matters to me is that there are people that I can be open with, and I suppose really that's why stuff has been so difficult since I left. I left behind the people who I cared about most, and I am now in a situation where the only way I will ever be able to have people like that again in the same way is by putting myself out there and placing trust in people I've never even met yet, and that's something that I find really really difficult, and certainly don't do naturally. To ever become "Me" I not only need to break down the barriers I have built, I also actively need to be able to bring myself to actually step outside the safe place I have constructed, and that is a massive step of faith, and something I find incredibly difficult. Ever since the end of "The Exoskeleton" (which I will probably mention in a post at some point, because I know I have a lot of people reading this who won't necessarily know what that is) I have been in a position where I am now able to make this change, but it requires me to actually do something. In order to change I must go against everything I have ever known, all my principles with regard to social interaction. I can't just sit on the sidelines any more, I need to "participate" as Charlie puts it.
Up until I left, I had always been in a position where I had somewhere I could go, people I could trust and just talk to, about life, about the universe, about anything, good and bad. Over the past years the number of people I felt really comfortable around gradually decreased, as people moved on, or stuff happened, and eventually that number was just one. Leaving that person behind to go to university has been genuinely the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and life without them has been incredibly difficult, since we spent so much time together. It's not like I lost them, we're still in contact, and we still talk a lot, but we've both moved on with life, and it has taken us in different directions, and I'm stuck in a world of "what might have been if we'd never met, or if I'd done certain things differently".
I'm going to stop talking here, since it's getting kinda late, and I've never been very good at endings, particularly for stuff like this, but I will leave you with a passage from the book:
“It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. I don't know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it's okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite.
Love always,
Charlie"
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