The Perks of Being A Wallflower

"We accept the love we think we deserve." This has been an important quote for me for years, and at one point even considered getting it tattooed on my ribs. I remember reading this book when I was twenty-two, so nearly six years ago. There are SO MANY take aways from this book for any teen/twenty something. Stephen Chbosky wrote a work of grit, love, hate, and more. 

We meet Charlie, the main character of the story as he begins his freshman year of high school. We all know how awkward and angsty teenagers are, and so this is a weird time in his life. One thing I love about this book was how the narrative was written. Charlie is writing letters to someone, but we do not know who, and we never find out. The Oxford definition of being a wallflower is "a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party". I am sure we have all felt like wallflowers at some point in our lives, but some more than ever. Charlie is the textbook definition of a wallflower. He is observant and keeps to himself. I personally connect to this book and to Charlie on so many levels. It deals with depression, suicide, love relationships, friendships, family, and so much more. 

The book also gives us some backstory on Charlie. We meet his his Aunt Helen who died in a car crash on his seventh birthday. He was very close with his aunt, and as a reader we can feel him coping with his grief. As the story develops we see Charlie forge relationships with a teacher, and his new two friends, Sam and Patrick. The book goes on to show their friendships blossom. 

When I hear "we accept the love we think we deserve", I think the author had many different forms of expressing this throughout. Charlie's sister was in an abusive relationship, but she shrugs it off. This part of the book really hits me because I was in a situation very similar. I dated a man for two years who I thought loved me, but he was also physically and emotionally abusive, but I never left. I accepted his love because thats what I believed I deserved. We later see Charlie and Sam start to get intimate, which was expected with how their relationship had started to blossom, but then something completely unexpected happened. As things start to warm up, Charlie gets extremely uncomfortable. He has realized that his Aunt Helen had molested him as a child, and he had suppressed these memories. By the end of the book we learn that Charlie has been admitted into a mental hospital because that day when he got home after he remembered about his aunt he mentally lost it. The way the narritative is written we go from Charlie basically worshipping his aunt, to finding out she was sexually abusing him as a child. I am so happy I had chose to pick this book back up. It reminded me of so many feelings, both good and bad. I have refused to watch the movie because of the love I have for the book. I recommend it for anyone looking for a deep read.