I finished the book. It's honestly frightening how similar I feel to Charlie. Anyways, where was I...? I had just written about Cody... so anyways... Middle-school was hell... and every year, I had less and less desire to do my given tasks. I started failing hard in the 8th grade. My guardians were pulling every trick and every favor they could to try to get me to pass. To do my work. To be myself again... but this was me.
     That was when I slowly started becoming a wallflower. That's when I started noticing all of the pain that everyone around me experienced... and it got to me. Over and over again, until one day I snapped. I couldn't take it anymore. Things just seemed pointless to me. I didn't know what to do... so I got home and instantly went to sleep. When I woke up to the sound of my grandparents arguing, my face was still wet with tears. I overheard how they said they were going to send me off to a "boy's home" or something, where bad boys got taken away from their families and never got to see them again. I thought they didn't love me anymore... I thought that they didn't want me around because I was just a waste of space. 
     I calmly stood up, walked to the bathroom and took the razor out of a shaving razor, and sliced at my arms for the first time. I walked out of the bathroom and just looked at them, arms dripping crimson into the carpet. I asked them if they wanted me gone. They said no. They started crying. I started crying harder than I had ever cried before. I just wanted them to be happy, and all I'd accomplished was the complete opposite. The next week I had to wear bandages on my arms to school. I didn't tell anyone except for Cody what I had done. That made me even more upset... I forgot all about Cody... I felt like it was my job to keep him happy... and here he was obviously disturbed by what I did. Cody had his own problems. The last thing he needed was for me to go and break down on him.
     Graduation of 8th grade year was both a sad, and great day. I was acknowledged for getting a poem of mine published into a book, and I think I made my reading teacher proud. The thought that I made her proud was one of the best feelings I had felt in the longest time. I cried at my graduation, and it was hard to hold back my tears. I felt like I was good for something again.
     Eventually all of my depression softly floated away, as if being carried on a spring breeze. I started branching out more and talking to more people, but only online because I didn't have much contact with friends over the summer. The beginning of my 9th grade year is where I really started to enjoy life again. I didn't have any more classes with Cody though, but we ate lunch and still talked to each-other in the halls. I did make another best friend though, his name was Johnny. Johnny reminded me a lot of Cody. Johnny was really funny and had a great sense of humor. It's terrible to say this but Johnny in a way replaced Cody that year... Cody stopped talking to me, and I got really depressed but I ended up talking to him again halfway through the year and me Cody and Johnny became great friends. I was also good friends with Johnny's sister Dakota, who became something of a sister to me. Cody got worse with his issues that year and gave into himself. The end of that year was unbearable. Johnny and Dakota moved away. I still miss them. Cody still misses Johnny.

     Well, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Ian, I'm 16, and I am a 'wallflower'. What is a wallflower? Wallflowers are the people who see things, keep quiet about them and understand what's happening. I recently started reading Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", and I just finished the first chapter and the way the book is written is simply gripping. It's written like letters from the point of view of the main character Charlie. The book tells his story... After I finished the first chapter... I decided that I should tell my story... what life as a wallflower is like...

     So I guess I should start with telling you the beginning. Well... lets not start with being born... but instead we should skip around for awhile. My childhood, as far as I am concerned was decent. My parents got divorced when I was about a year old, if that even, but I was still raised fairly well by my grandparents for the most part. After the divorce though, my mom won custody over me and I lived with her... I still got to see dad every so often, so I was happy I think? (I was a toddler, I don't really remember much.) One of my earliest actual memories was me playing on my toy ATV, riding around in the yard being chased by my neighbor. He was lots of fun you know? He was really nice, and in his early to mid twenties, and really funny! So he and my mom started talking and they were legitimately happy together, and I was happy too because I got to see the nice man more often.

     I was kind-of dragged in-between grand parents as a kid though, so I was able to see the other side of my family lots too. Which included my older brother on my dad's side, Zach. Zach was cool, we had lots of fun together, but he could be a bit of a jerk sometimes. He would always give me noogies, and scare me, and try to play fight with me, but I never really liked to fight, so it would end up with him chasing me around the house and then my grandmother yelling at us to settle down.

     I eventually got to know the nice man my mom was dating really well. His name was Andy. He was really cool and I grew to love him alot! A couple years later they got married and Andy became my step-dad which was really cool because he was also my really good friend.

     In elementary school I was a straight A honor student... but I guess to balance out my brains, life decided to throw me a curve-ball and also make me a freak. Everyone always called me names and picked on me, but it didn't really matter those days because my social life was at home waiting for me. Soon enough I started to branch out and make a few friends here and there, but I also stopped worrying about my grades in school as much and I started slacking.

I remember one day I came home with an F on one of my math tests, and Andy was furious. He went and got a hammer and threatened to break my Playstation2, which were kinda new at the time, so I flipped out and ran into my room and slammed my door, and unplugged the system from the tv and hid under my bed with it and cried. Looking back on it now, it seems really silly honestly.

     Like I said, I had a good life I suppose... Never really had much of a social life. Never really was noticed much by the other students... I was bullied every now and then, and had to teach myself how to fight, but I played soccer for 5 years so my legs became my main means of defending myself... I never did like to fight. People stopped picking on me once I stood up for myself and then I even made some new friends... life was good...

     One day I came home. Everyone was crying and I didn't understand what was going on... mom was there too, which was strange because she had her own place... I asked what was wrong, and if someone had died... My grandpa looked at me... and told me Andy passed away in his sleep...

     When middle-school started, I didn't really have a lot of motivation to do anything anymore... I didn't want to wake up in the mornings. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to do my work. I didn't want to breathe. I did though... I carried on... and then one day, I met a kid who was sitting alone and I walked over and sat beside him. We started talking about how we both like books, and anime, and a variety of other things. He told me his name was Cody. To this day, Cody is my best friend in the entire world. Cody was always getting picked on and getting called names like "emo" or "faggot" because of the way he looked, and it really pissed me off. One day, some redneck punk tried to start a fight with him over a girl, so I stepped in-between them and I told the guy that if he ever laid a finger on Cody, that I would break it off. I never liked fighting, but standing up for Cody was the most important thing to me at the time, so I did whatever I had to do to keep my best friend safe.