The best way for me to describe the memoir Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs is disturbingly delightful. Yes, that is a contradiction. But, when you find yourself reading a book about a young teenager who is abandoned, left to live with a bunch of crazy people, and gets involved with a 33 year old pedophile, and you laugh about it? That is disturbingly delightful.
Augusten Burroughs' mother is a bi-polar poet and his father is an alcoholic. They divorce and Augusten's mother leaves him with her eccentric psychiatrist. How this man got a degree in psychiatry I will never understand, but I do know that it makes me nervous about our educational system. His family is entirely insane, and I would blame that on the psychiatrist himself. And yet, somehow, Augusten finds a place there and continues to fight and survive.
August Burroughs knew at a young age that he was gay and embraced it. If anything, that is the real proof of a young boy's courage. He befriends the psychiatrist's daughters as they play games with the electroshock therapy machine and smash holes in the ceiling of the kitchen because they wanted a skylight. The psychiatrist does not scold them in any way and lets them do what they please. The oldest daughter goes nuts and at one point thinks her dead cat has come back from the dead and wants to dig up the cat's grave to prove it. Through all of this, Burroughs struggles to achieve a real relationship with his selfish mother, who has come out that she is a lesbian.
Burroughs also gets involved with a pedophile and talks about it unabashedly. Yes, of course he knows it was wrong, but when you are thirteen and there is no one taking care of you, then you would do the same thing. The older man paid attention to him, something no one else wanted to do. Although it is shocking, especially because Burroughs does not write about it like he was a victim, but that is what makes it so true. Harrowing and disturbing, yes, but real.
How Augusten Burroughs managed to create a life for himself that was not filled with self pity, I do not know, but certainly admire. He is a very successful writer, who has used his past to teach people that it is okay to laugh through the tough times. It keeps you sane.
Many people might find this book too disturbing to enjoy it for the story that it is. I imagine many jaws dropping and not a single bit of laughter. However, if you cannot laugh in the face of hardship, then you cannot survive. That is what Augusten Burroughs has taught me. Also, after reading Running with Scissors I feel a lot better about my own haphazard life! Suddenly, I had it really good growing up.
Take on this book, and learn to laugh. Find it at amazon.com: Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs