On Being Infinite

 

I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower at least five times before I turned twelve. There's a moment in the movie where Emma Watson stands up in a moving car in a tunnel, David Bowie's Heroes playing in the background, and the narrator states: "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."

 I chased that feeling for years. I printed the line out and stuck it to my wall. I daydreamed about a life in which I was sixteen, where I had friends, a boyfriend who looked like Logan Lerman, a car, a tunnel, and above all a life that was shot from four angles, edited professionally, and set to an immaculate soundtrack.

 I'm going to be sixteen for one more month. So far, surprisingly enough, I have not transformed into a gorgeous 21 year old actress. These past few years have been comprised mainly of moments I would never put in a movie; how many hours do most coming of age films spend on sitting around in your bedroom feeling bored?

 I stopped actively thinking about my perfect movie future a while ago. I figured it wouldn't happen - stuff like that doesn't happen in real life. I tore down the quotes on my walls and painted them white. A blank slate - except I didn't put anything up. I spent a year or so way too jaded for someone barely into teenage, so consciously aware of my lack of a need to romanticise my life that I ended up making it seem a lot more bleak than it was. 

 And then, somewhere along the line, I started living instead. On the doorstep of seventeen, I'm realising that I've been having moments where I feel infinite all my life. I don't have the boyfriend yet, or the perfect angles to be filmed from. I'm starting to realise I never really wanted any of that. You don't get a music director adding a soundtrack to your life, but you can listen to music if you want to. And I like picking my music.

 I have things on my walls now. Art my friends made for me, pictures I like, poetry I love. I didn't put any of it up there because it's who I want to be in four years - I put it up there because it's who I am right now. When I look at my walls now, I don't get lost in dreams of a future. I get up and dance.

 I will never be Emma Watson's character in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. My story has a lot more sitting around in my bedroom feeling bored, a lot less cars and tunnels and David Bowie. But that's okay, because her life ends when the story does, and my life is more than a story.

~Brishti Chakraborthy- AS Level