How Broken People Love Part-I ft. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

If people always made the best choices for themselves, how different would the concepts of love and friendship be? Remember this scene from the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower, where Sam (Emma Watson) asks Charlie (Logan Lerman):

Why do I, and everyone I love, pick people who treat us like we’re nothing?

We accept the love we think we deserve, Charlie says.

Then why didn’t you ever ask me out, asks Sam.

As Charlie struggles to find an answer, it got me thinking – how do we treat the people we love? When we love someone, we want it to rain stardust upon them. However, we are all people, with experiences that shape us, and backstories that dictate our actions just as much, maybe more than our conscious choices. So I ask again – how do people treat the people they love?

This is going to be a series.

How Broken People Love Part-I: When Love and Friendship Are Wishful Thinking…

So, Sam complains: Then why didn’t you ever ask me out?

Charlie manages to say: Umm, I just didn’t think that you wanted that.

Sam asks: Well, what did you want?

Charlie utters: I just want you to be happy.

We have all met a ‘Charlie’ in someone, haven’t we – a friend or a lover, or maybe family?

When they tell you they love you, watch out. They will truly mean it, but to them, the things and the people they love are dreams they can never touch. So, they will let you go. They will bask in the longing it brings them. They will wrap themselves in their cosy loneliness as they watch you pick yourself up with watery, dreamy eyes.

But, they will let you go.

And if only we dug a little deeper into them! We would know why.

…And So Are Hopes and Dreams

Maybe they have never known what it is like to live a dream.

Maybe whizzing past classrooms with clutched hands and wobbly toes to slide under isolated staircases, to kiss in hushed undertones, to laugh in whispers at their anarchy, to fall in the abysmal eyes of their lovers, are all dreams they have harboured. And just like all other dreams, they have convinced themselves they are too small for it.

Maybe longing for it, fancying it, basking in its wait to forlornness is what comes naturally to them. Just like they have been waiting to paint their masterpiece. They discovered that colours flirted with them when they were twelve. They have painted their hearts out ever since, but they do not know what is special about those paintings. Ask them if they would be a painter, and watch them retract into their shells. As if they have been sitting inside a cage, their faces plunging between two thick, rusting iron bars, dreaming of the infinite things the world outside offers.

Except the cage is not locked. They never hobbled out in their younger years, for they might get lost in the infinity. They were never taught to trust their wings, never told that there was something special about them, too, that needed to be kindled, nurtured, and built. So, they do not leave the cage to take a leap of faith, to fly, for the scare of the fall is all they know.

Why do their hopes and dreams matter? They do not know.

Or maybe they took a leap of faith and fell against their faces, and the fall has made a home inside them.

In case this sounds irrational, we think with our minds, but we feel with our bodies. And what we feel has inertia – our body remembers its state and does not wish to change it. Our subconscious controls this state, but it cannot think. It has picked up beliefs over the years and complies with them. That inner voice, the subconscious, uses a narrative to streamline our experiences with our beliefs to make sense of them. It weaves a story to define who we are.

And it does not break its patterns unless we experience trauma, or we are in love. In love, yes, because we have chemical hearts, remember? The frenzy of new love is so strong our hearts swim in bubble baths. However, when those bubbles die out, as new love ages, we fall into our old patterns again. Our belief system takes over.

So, some questions may be important here:

• What are their dreams? Do they talk about them in their moments of strength or moments of wistful blabber?
• Do they fight their circumstances and take leaps of faith to pursue them?
• Or do they let them settle in some corner of their minds and gather dust?
• How often have they experienced love or friendship to fulfilment?
• Have they spent more time longing for it?
• The last time they felt it, how did it end for them?
• When they want, or like something, do they find themselves worthy of it?

“Can We Make Them Know That They Deserve More?”

We can try.

When Charlie says, I just want you to be happy, Sam gets annoyed.

Don’t you get it, Charlie?

I can’t feel that.

That’s really sweet and everything, but you can’t just sit there and put everybody’s life ahead of yours and think that counts as love.

I don’t wanna be somebody’s crush…

That is the thing – it will leave us abandoned, stranded with our feelings. After all, what is our fault? Many a time, it will also trigger our demons, make us question our worth. We will feel angry, and annoyed with them. We will want to tell them how many of their beliefs are bullshit. We will also want to give them time to heal and come back to us.

And we must. We must hold their hands as they walk through their puddle, but it is their puddle to jump. Puddle, trench, or ocean – we do not know. Whether they think they can do it, whether they want to – it’s all theirs to decide.

All we can do is try, and the genius is about knowing when to stop.

Image Credits: A Still from the Movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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