Mike Batie - More Thoughts on "Perks of Being a Wallflower"

I was thinking about what happened to Charlie when he was a child, and how it affected him as he got older. Many people may not realize just how much things that happen to children will affect them throughout their entire lives.

Oh the breakdown scene...maybe a little too close to home,
but I knew exactly how the character felt. —Mike Batie

I read that the age bracket of 6-9 is crucial years when children are forming to a greater degree their own identity—mental, emotional, gender, etc. So when things happen to kids during this time, speaking of abuse, it can really screw them up into adulthood, because trauma was introduced into those tender formative years. I was grateful to see the conflicted character of Charlie in this movie, who was dealing with things that happened to him in his childhood, that he so dearly sought to repress and forget about, but it only got worse. Many survivors of childhood trauma can relate to the flashbacks, seeing things, breakdowns...trying to hold it all in but at some point retreating somewhere private to breakdown. Even if the story is fiction, the author clearly knows what he wrote about.