The Perks of Being a Wallflower

This is a story of how a book broke my heart. Of how a boy who saw too much and felt even more, made me feel less alone. Made me feel like, I wasn't the only person in the world who felt all the world's the pain all the time. I read it one year ago. I read it when I was still quietly being suffocated by a depression I didn't understand.  I read it before I knew the power of stories and the healing power of saying aloud, 'it hurts, but I am alive.'

This, is how I felt after I read the book. This precious masterpiece of a story that isn't just a story. And this, what I am about to write, is how I felt after I saw the movie.

I am shaking and dizzy and I feel nausea, the kind that comes with having your heart broken and realising it. It's the way I felt the entire time I watched the movie. It's the feeling that made me cry, even before the movie started and then throughout the film, just knowing I would experience the story all over again, and in a whole new way.

I think, it was done perfectly. Everything. I think I knew it would be when I saw that the author was so involved in it's making, but it became even more than I imagined. It became everything it should be. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, a soul-crushingly perfect adaption of the book. Every character was so very who they are, their eyes were full with all that's happened to them, in a way that didn't have to be said out loud.

I think, I still relate to Charlie in too many ways to be good, but I also wish to be as effervescent as Sam and wish to have someone as lovely as Patrick looking out for me, which makes me feel like maybe a part of me is hopeful.

I hope you know that you're worth the world, whoever you are, reading this. I hope you're absolutely certain of your worth. And I hope you never feel alone or in pain, which I know is unrealistic, but I will wish it anyway because if I could make it stop, make you stop hurting, I would do everything I can to be sure of it.

Dear Charlie, I will love you forever. For breaking my heart so completely, and for making me feel like one day I could be whole again.

"But right now these moments are not stories. This is happening, I am here and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite."