On wallflowers
17/09/2018: The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a book by Steven Chobsky. Charlie and I have a lot in common. It is also a movie with Emma Watson, which does not do it justice.Hello, world.
I haven’t written anything in here for quite a while. And to be perfectly honest, it is to a significant extent a result of me not doing so well. From the outside, it seems that things hold together pretty well and there is no reason for greater concern. On the inside however, things are progressively crumbling. Why, though\? There is no obvious immediate reason, right\?
I have been medicating for over two years, worked my job in Prague over the holiday, prepared myself for start of new academic year and moved to Amsterdam. Upon arrival, I became friends with a girl living in the apartment above me, things got hot pretty quickly and then cooled down again, because it just isn’t the right thing for me. I need more solitude than she can bare and our time together costs me too much energy. That should be okay, I guess.
Then, there is the university, which did fulfill most of my expectations regarding academic level and degree of expectations. The econometrics part of my course, although not too dry, is hard and the marketing module, which I have as electives, feels slightly disorganized but okay otherwise. If you overlook the difficulties I’ve had dealing with teammates of lacking academic skills, that is. Unfortunately, the degree to which they take care of their students is on a level incomparable to what it was in Plymouth.
You see, there was always someone talk to, as well as the ever so praised international student support group, where even the more introverted individuals could meet people and make friends. The last attempt I made to succeed in this was a pub quiz during the international introduction week, which I decided to leave after 5 minutes of attempting to reach my assigned team at their table. And so, I move around, watching people speak language I do not yet understand very well and occasionaly speak to someone out of the blue, which leads nowhere anyway.
Yeah, I am going through my wallflower period again. And now that I’ve read the awesome book and seen the far less awesome movie, I finally know what I am talking about. Charlie made friends thanks to seeing someone incur an episode of societal injustice. Not owing to his conversation skills or his stunning charm but to his humbleness and empathy towards others. He bypassed the stupid constructs of being popular and linked with the right people.
In some sense, he was lucky, but in high school setting, it much more likely an occurence than later in life. Even though I have classes and get connected with a random group of people, most are just normal. And that bores me, because what kind of wisdom am I gonna get out of someone who throws their ego around the room like a dumbfuck\? It’s their choice, but I prefer humble people who accept others, their views, and their needs. Meh.
Anyway, Charlie Kelmeckis is a character I admire and will never forget. We have a common pattern in personal history as well as quite similar personality traits. His inner world was crumbling throughout the book, sometimes with outside reasons, sometimes through the law of inertia. As small as the triggers might be, there was an air bubble somewhere inside him that lived its own life and every slight reductive reaction in his mind passed more oxygen atoms in its direction. And while reverse oxidation helped at times, it swelled.
Now, his major disadvantage was the unknown origin of the bubble. I know most of my bubbles fairly well, as he does nowadays. But the bubble is still there. And we both have to live with it. We move on and live our lives, trying to make them awesome, until a minor thing shakes us up and causes the air bubble to increase again a little. And because our bubble is bigger than that of others, our reactions to any changes to its size and shape are gonna be greater in magnitude than those of others. We are going to overreact. All of those dealing with conditions like PTSD, borderline personality disorder (most likely our specific case), or some of the more severe conditions like OCD.
And there is good range of literature on dealing with trauma and moving on, but it is always a life-long process. As cured as we are, slipping back is just as easy as relapse is for a cured alcoholic. We are dealing with ourselves on a day to day basis. Managing.
I am a czech dude with a history of academic excellence in the UK and presence at one of world’s top universities. Running forward while trying to stop the bleeding wound on my chest. The harder I run, the faster my heart beats and the harder it is to keep it sealed. But I do, because sitting on the ground and giving up just does not feel like it would lead to any sort of pleasure.
Finally, a short reflection on the movie: It is awesome and there is Emma Watson playing one of the lead characters. But Patrick’s queer is amplified way too much, and important details like candice getting pregnant and then not-pregnant again omitted. Still, the main point remains, plus it makes you more likely to cry, because it all happens so quickly.
