“I don’t know if I will have the time to write any more letters because I might be too busy trying to participate” – Charlie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I saw this movie for the first time tonight. Most of it, anyway. Enough to understand the important parts.
And of course, I cried at the end. Not just because the end of the movie is meant to take your heart and jerk it in several different directions at once. But because the end, especially the end, that wasn’t just a movie for me. I tried to make light of it, throwing out comments like “that’s a damn nice psych ward room.”
But that’s because internally, I wasn’t seeing Charlie’s cozy room. Internally, I was seeing my psych ward rooms. The ones that I spent too many days in last year. Over a year ago now, actually. It’s strange, that those days, the most bruised ones I’ve garnered in life, are so far away now. It’s been a year. It’s over. I’m free.
But I remember the days when I wasn’t. I have notebooks, drawers of them, filled with pages and pages of those days when I was not participating but was just trying to survive – or, slowly letting go of the idea that I would. My life is there, on those wrinkled and worn and smudged notebook sheets. I couldn’t bear physicality, so I existed, put myself into letters.
Because I needed a way for my narrative to be important.
And so it’s there, years of myself, scribbled down in journal entries and poems and short stories. Years where I left marks of myself in metaphor and analogy. Years where I could only be a silent girl, inked into existence.
In the end, they were all letters. Some of them were addressed as letters to God. But in the end, they were all really letters to me.
I forgot to pack those notebooks with me for my trips this holiday. Well, not quite “forgot”… I didn’t even think about doing it in the first place.
Because I don’t live my life in those notebooks anymore.
Now, I am participating.
Quill Aquiver 
That’s an amazing book, it was my favorite when i was a teenager, it felt so weird to watch the characters i loved so much came to life. I’m happy that it inspire you, it did the same for me. 🙂
I’m glad that it sounds like you were happy with the movie adaptation of the book! I haven’t read the novel itself, but it seemed like the movie held to it with a fair amount of artistic integrity. 🙂
After I initially commented I appear to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on every time a comment is
added I recieve 4 emails with the exact same comment.
Is there an easy method you are able to remove me from that service?
Appreciate it!
Hello there! And yikes! So sorry that the WordPress comment functionality is overloading you with emails! I unfortunately can’t personally remove that service for you, but at the bottom of the emails that you’ve been receiving, there should be some sort of “unsubscribe from comments” button. If it’s not there, I’d recommend checking out the detailed instructions on the WordPress comment settings guide: http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/ If that doesn’t help, try emailing the WordPress tech support directly. Best of luck!
It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d definitely donate to this brilliant blog!
I guess for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
I look forward to new updates and will talk about this site
with my Facebook group. Chat soon!