• Prologue- The Perks of Being Wallflower


    When chance gives such interesting circumstances, why bother to make stuff up?

    Kids in distressed families are repertories of silence and carry arctic wastelands of words not to be uttered, stories not to be told. Or to be told in sketchiest form, merely brushed by.

    It’s an irony that airing these dramas is often a family’s biggest taboo. Yet the bristling agony of secrecy can only be relieved by talk, hours and hours of unmuzzled talk, the recounting of stories.

    Who listens is almost beside the point, so long as the watching eyes remain lit, and the head tilts at the angle indicating attention and care.

    Without such talk by the kids of these families, there’s usually a grave sense of personal fault, of failing to rescue those beloved lost or doomed. That silence ticks out inside of its bearer, the constant small sting of guilt. What if, what ft, what if: why didn’t I, why didn’t I, why didn’t I…

    It’s the gravity of such silence that I detected in myself long ago. At some point, my therapist stared at me saying, “I can tell that you’ve suffered.” That observation took my breath away at its simple nobility.

    “I have,” I said, nodding in acknowledgement. “I have suffered.”

    “You’ve known real despair,” she said. “I can see that.”

    To describe me now, I guess you could say that after everything I’m in a state of… clarity???

    Perhaps I have come to that point of clarity that I have always hoped for… at least I think. I know what I want, what I don't want. Who I want (no man at present, which is the best way to be), and who I don't want (the list has become longer since the start). I know where I am happy and where I am needed. I think I have always known this . . . I am just fully willing to admit (and submit) to it now.

    I am not sure which helped me come to these conclusions. Perhaps it was practically trying to kill myself, maybe almost being raped. Perhaps it was being told I'm not the one, maybe it was mother who told me how much of a failure I am, or the rain that fell on my face as I watched my sister being thrown by my mother in a drunken haze out of the house.

    This dream that I am chasing but all the people supposed to be there aren’t there to help. Possibly it was the blinking lights of the police car that became my savoir during a bad night, or waking up to the sound of my parents fighting over spilt milk.

    Or the mixed look of pity, disgust and fright on the counselor’s face who I told the truth to, or the look of understanding and camaraderie of the social worker’s face. Perhaps it was looking into the eyes of the man in the white suit that had to sit with me in the waiting room since they thought I couldn't be left alone. Maybe, possibly, or perhaps it was the fact that it all really happened in my life. I am tired of sitting around miserable hearing that this will help me be a better more fulfilled person in my life later. I don't want later. I want to be happy now and feel fulfilled now. I want to go to sleep happy about my day instead of waiting with baited breath for a good day to come along.

    One of these days maybe a gun will be pointed in my direction, or a man will try and rape me and I won't have enough wits about me to tell him no, maybe I'll end up in the emergency room and not wake up. One of these days it will all be over.

    "You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one girl on her own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more DETAIL in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge."

    I wish a couple of words were always enough, but unfortunately they aren’t.