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.