Anastasia gave me a copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower as an early Christmas present, and I'been reading it voraciously. In fact, I just finished it, and its been the cause of quite a bit of pretty heavy thought. When Anastasia gave the book to me, she said, "I think you can relate, but in a good way," and she was right.
Charlie was, at first, foreign to me. I don't think the same way he does, I don't have the same social problems that he does. At least, Me right now doesn't. But when I thought about it, Charlie and Me from not too long ago aren't all that different. This book made me remember a time in my life that I've worked hard to put behind me, but not in a way that makes me blame anybody. It wasn't a bad memory; it was reflective, and seeing how Charlie handles the situations that he's thrown into is helping me to figure out why I dealt with my own problems in the way that I did. And as Charlie's letters kept coming, I started to see that Me right now isn't all that different from Charlie. Like I said before, its not that the details about us are similar, save for one striking resemblance. I don't do drugs, I don't skip class; I don't have the same psychiatric problems or the same background as Charlie. I'm like him in the same way that I'm like everybody else: we all feel. We feel the same hurt, fear, and sadness; the same happiness and love. We may feel these things for different reasons, but these emotions are what tie us all together, what gives us our humanity. So, yeah, I'm like Charlie, in a broad, overarching sense, and in one other way...
Anastasia, you are my Sam. I think this is what you wanted me to take away from the book, and its what I have taken away. The reasons differ, but the idea is the same. I know that I love you, and I think that you have feelings for me, but you also have stronger feelings for someone else. I'm doing my best to come to terms with this, and to be happy that you've found somebody. Do I still want that somebody to be me? Yes. But its not, and that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you're happy with the decisions that you've made. If this means that I've missed the purpose of the story, then so be it. Chbosky will just have to be disappointed in me.
Thanks again for the book. I can't say that it made me feel better, but it did make me see more clearly. There are still things that I'm missing, and there always will be. I'll never know how anyone other than myself really feels, and even knowing how I feel can be a challenge sometimes. But getting a peek inside somebody else's head has made me understand some of the things that I've done wrong, why they were wrong to begin with, how I can fix them, and how I can't. Participation has its place, and so does being a wallflower. The hard part about life is figuring out where those places are, and what comes in between.
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