Dear Professor,

Dear Professor,

I am sorry, but I cannot join the class today in critically analyzing Stephen Chbosky's popular novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. 

It is perhaps for the same reason that you cannot take a sunset and dissect its colors and patterns, studying how the prisms of light band together to create reds, yellows, blues.

You see, to me, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is wholly beautiful and complete. Its technicalities should not be tampered with.

I am not saying you should not pick it apart. I encourage the class to join you in discussing the strengths of its form and the misplacement of its genre.

I, however, will be unable to join you.

My reason, you will find, is most compelling.

This book saved my life.

Approximately sixteen months ago, I found myself alone and crazy in a dusty brown city in Northeast Africa.
Approximately sixteen months ago, my mother made an eight thousand mile phone call to ask me if I was having thoughts of suicide.
Approximately sixteen months ago, "yes" was the only word I could mutter.

See you, this book saved my life.

Because this is the book I brought with me for the seventeen hour plane ride during which I spent more time freaking out than reading.

So this is the book that joined me in bed for five nights when panic attacks denied me slumber.

I didn't have any people with me during those nights.

But I had God.
And I had Charlie.

And I firmly believe that between the two of them, I somehow stayed alive long enough to make it home.

Me and God and Charlie hung out on a metal bunk bed for days, thinking about life and sharing in the darkness.

So I am sorry that I cannot join the class today in critically analyzing this novel.

I, instead, will sit silently and thank God and Charlie for life.

I hope you understand,

Your Student