The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. ISBN: 9780671027346.Probably the most famous line from this novel is, "[W]e love the people we think we deserve." Charlie's mother says it while he is talking to her about why his sister is in love with someone who hit her. Before that, there is another striking moment in which Charlie's mom tells his sister to never say that someone is her "whole world." Wow. If only someone would have told that to Bella in the first book, Twilight might have been something I could have lived with.
Joking aside, I really wish that more teenage girls, and women in general, would get this advice. In fact I wish more of everyone would get this advice, particularly in their young and formative years. It is already so difficult to be in love and deal with the awkwardness of social relationships that adding infatuation and self-isolationism into this is crippling. Maybe it's something we all have to go through, because I certainly dealt with it (see this post). But it would have been nice to have someone tell me this, even if I still went through the heart ache, and been able to think back about that previous advice and say to myself, "Oh, that's what they meant."
Because you know what, sometimes I'm just not that smart. It took me a long time to figure out exactly why my long distance college relationship didn't work out, and who played what parts in it not working out. I'm still not happy with the way it ended and I still don't feel like I have the necessary closure, but if I had had that advice beforehand maybe I would have figured it out early enough to avoid some of the pain I went through, or at the very least to be able to tell my ex-boyfriend where to go and exactly why.
I guess what I would like to say to anyone who keeps making the same mistakes in love is: you deserve the best love possible because you are trying to be the best person possible, but you can't lose yourself in that love because you are the only person who knows what's best for you. I'm not trying to be hard on people who do dumb things for people they love; it's almost impossible not to do. I think sometimes we all need to take a step back from our romantic relationships and look at them as if they belonged to someone else; someone we like, but maybe who we know is a little too caught up in this thing for their own good. If you are doing things in a relationship that you would not recommend that friend do, maybe it's time to rethink exactly why you are in that relationship.
"Oh, but you're not doing that because your fiance is unemployed and kind of unmotivated, etc." You bet your ass I do. I evaluate everyday whether or not I should stay with my fiance. I love him, I love him dearly, but I realize that as good as he is for me emotionally and mentally, he may not be so good for me financially. There are issues about our relationship that I question all the time, and I may be making a huge mistake, but I do know what I'm getting into. And that's because I think about it objectively and in terms of what it means for me. As much as I love him and as much as I want to be with him, he has to work with me to make this a partnership. If he didn't know it before, he sure as hell knows it now (say hi to the editor everyone).*
*In case you were curious, my fiance and I did have a small fight over this, which was resolved in an adult (but not X-rated) manner (you perverts). He does want everyone to know that he thinks the whole last paragraph is a typo.**
**Sorry guys, I increased the font when I realized it was just too damned small.
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