Boyslove Haven: PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

Dear Friend,

You might think it weird that I am writing this letter to you. In fact, you'll be quite surprised considering that we do not know each other. It's just that I finally finished reading "The Perks of being a Wallflower" last night after hearing about it for so long. You see, I only got around to have a copy of it yesterday and read it in one sitting (well, actually in one lying since I was in bed the whole time last night until the early morning hours when I got to the end). What can I say but it certainly was all I've heard and read about it to be... a story of a teenager as he relates a year of his life to someone anonymous through letters he sends, detailing his life as he grows up. Its all about being able to blend with everyone else as things change within one's self, to be able to belong in a family, a circle of friends, a crowd and to finally be someone who knows one's self. It is a story of finding meaning to everything and knowing what lies behind everyone including ourselves.

Charlie, the boy in the story is perhaps the personification of each and everyone of us. Through his freshman year, we are given flashbacks and glimpses of when we were kids; unsure and full of questions. His, was a year when he learned about life. When he got to know himself through lessons that would include sex, girls, drugs, homosexuality, abuse, suicide, pride, family and love.

Reading through his life, I can help but take a few moments and reminisce about things that though painful at times were certainly no longer private jokes between me and those who were there but more like memories to be taken out once in awhile to be reminisced upon like the life-lessons they were.

In the end, this is a coming of age story, but one that pushes into our hearts and minds with not only guides to our memories but prods for us to examine what the meaning of growing up really means.

And to quote Charlie, "I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."

*Wallflower - means a person who usually stays in the background but observes people for who they are...

**The Perks of being a Wallflower was made into a movie to be shown in theatres 2012. It stars Logan Lerman, Emma Watson as Charlie and Sam respectively.