“We accept the love
we think we deserve.”
Here we are in the month of February, where Cupid
is busy, slinging arrows here and there in preparation for St. Valentine’s Day.
Ah, to love and be loved in return.
The
Perks of Being a Wallflower is an intense story, surrounding
the life and times of a teenage boy. These are the times when love, lust and
infatuation all seem to become one and the same. Infuse the other types of love
– familial and friendship, and life becomes extraordinarily complex.
One of the most profound statements made in the
book is “We accept the love we think we
deserve.” When I was younger, my greatest fear was the fear of being alone.
It was an intense feeling that couldn’t be shaken. I had spent the first six
years of my life primarily alone, due to life’s circumstances. So, I knew what
being alone was.
Ironically, in high school I didn’t chase after
every boy who turned my head. Nope, I was looking for the one. I, like Charlie in The
Perks of Being a Wallflower, was looking to fill that enigmatic something
that just couldn’t quite be named. Maybe it was a void left by the absence of
my father. Maybe it was the loss of one my best friends. Maybe it was just a need
for a sense of self-worth in a society that had labeled me long before I even
knew they existed. Maybe…just maybe it was a combination of all of that and
more. Being a teenager isn’t easy; for girls or boys.
My first real, true and honest kiss was magical. I
can remember it like it happened just last night. We had sat on the old wooden merry-go-round
on the playground at the elementary school. It was December 1984. I had turned
16 that past summer, and I had met the magical kisser the following October. We
talked for a long time that night, as we had many a nights before that. It was
warmer than usual for December, so I hadn’t dressed for being outside for long.
Big flakes of snow had begun to fall from the overcast sky. We stood up, and he
placed his leather jacket around my shoulders, and then he kissed me. In that one moment the whole world stopped, and became much smaller, including only him
and me. He was the one. I told you it
was magical.
Reality
check: The one was six years older than me. He
often drank and smoked a lot of pot.
Love is many a splendored thing, blinding being
the greatest of these when you are sixteen. One magical kiss and the gates to
hell opened wide. I overlooked the fact that he was an alcoholic and a pothead.
I overlooked every red flag that presented itself – because he loved me. He doted on me, and gave me
everything I thought I didn’t have.
We broke up about a year and half later. He went
back to the East Coast, and I went to on to college, where the loneliness got
the best of me, and I called him, just to see how he was. It was magical again.
We picked up just where we had left off. The next thing I knew, he surprised me
and showed up on my doorstep in October. After all, he loved me.
We spent eight years making each other miserable.
I was trying desperately to make him into the man I had dreamed to be the one. He was trying desperately to be
who he was. The friction became too much for both of us. He lied, cheated, and
fed his addictions. The more I pushed back about his behavior, the more he
indulged himself, now blaming me. He never hit me, he didn’t have to - his
words were enough.
The most common question people ask me about those
eight years is why did I stay? The answer is because I had accepted the love I thought
I deserved.
In The Perks
of Being a Wallflower, Charlie and his friends learn that they were doing
the same thing I was, only in a different way.
I’m not afraid to be alone anymore. In fact, I
prefer to be alone. I don’t go looking for the
one. I’m not sure the one really
exists, but I maintain the hope that the one is looking for me.
WARNING:
There are a lot of triggers in this book.
