you have to do things

"It's much easier to not know things sometimes.  Things change and friends

leave.  And life doesn't stop for anybody.  I wanted to laugh.  Or maybe get mad.

Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me.  I think the idea is

that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to

share it with other people.  You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead

of yours and think that counts as love.  You just can't.  You have to do things.  I'm

going to do what I want to do.  I'm going to be who I really am.  And I'm going

to figure out what that is.  And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad

about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what

they didn't know.  I don't know.  I guess there could always be someone to blame.

It's just different.  Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I

think that the only perspective is to really be there.  Because it's okay to

feel things.  I was really there.  And that was enough to make me feel infinite

I feel infinite."

(Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky)

Perks of Being a Wallflower has become one of my recent favorite books.  I read it for the first time over a year ago, and it's the first book I've read in a really long time that I just couldn't put down.  I remember forcing myself to go to sleep only to wake up at 3:00 a.m. just to finish it. 

And then, I laughed and cried myself to sleep.  Sounds crazy, huh?  I thought I was delirious.  Maybe it was the lack of sleep.  But I say, it was the story.  It was the characters.  It was the words spoken in the voice of a young boy and the girl he loved that just touched every nerve inside of me, and evoked the passions and loves and aspirations of my fifteen-year-old self. 

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