The second thing I like most to do besides listening to music is reading books. I love reading about people and their lives. I got really interested in stories about Holocaust Survivors and children who survived abuse of some kind. When I first started reading in this genre I think it was more for me to learn about how to live without all the pain from my past. If these persons could over come some traumatic event and their trauma coming out with a sense of understanding for life, I could too. My life drama was on the minimal scale to these stores of survival which to me made me feel better knowing I wasn't alone in my loneliness thinking I can overcome my pain and suffering.
Okay enough about me. I read a book called Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I would have to sum it up as a horrifying memoir of a boys life with a sense of being normal. This was a excellent book and it flowed from the beginning. I've read lots of books in my life and sometimes it takes a first chapter to get into the flow of the book and figuring out the way the author is writing. This book started out with good flow and it was easy to get into the story of the book which is a plus to me because I also hate having to read the first chapter twice once I figure out the flow. When I got into this book I couldn't wrap my head around this was a story of someones life. It was too crazy for me to think someone lived this life and it couldn't be a real life story. This kids life was crazy, chaotic and the people he was surrounded by were mentally unstable. The story was so brilliant and fascinating with a sense of normal. This kid was living this life in the sense this was normal to him. We as persons looking from the outside would think he was living some Bohemian life in a crazy world but to this kid it was his life and the author wrote it in a way this kid seemed ridiculously normal and his life wasn't the norm for children his age but the world he lived in was.
The book was about a child who parents divorced when he was 11. His mother was mentally troubled so she started seeing a psychologist for her problems and then one day she dropped her kid off at the Doctor's house. This family was a bunch of mixed matched group of characters in a rundown house described as falling apart and disgusting. The character I really enjoyed was the character Natalie. She was a 16 year old girl and when she was 13 her father give her to a has been 40 something Tennis Player and abused her. She came home with a large sum of money which her father kept for himself. When Augusten was 13 he came out he was gay and had a freakishly weird relationship with a 33 year old man who was the adopted son of the psychologist. There relationship lasted until one day the guy decided to vanish and was out of this kids life forever. Looking it from the outside I would say he was emotionally abused from his mother in her bizarre behaviour, his absent father, his new home of unique family members and his strange relationship with a man 20 years older. He never went to school, had the freedom any child would envy not having adults telling him what to think, say and do. He could live his life the way he wanted when he wanted. Like a bird flying free at the same time surrounded by strange and dysfunctional people. After reading the book I was very, I guess I would have to say disturbed. It bothered me to the point I couldn't believe a child lived this life and then at the same time in a world of crazy it felt like normal. It was an amazing book once you get over the shock of what the book was about and get over the fact this book had ridiculous amount of swearing in it.
Over all it's been one of the best books I read this year and that's says a lot because I've read a lot of books this past year and I found this book on the top of my list. This book isn't for everyone and the way I went into this book I had no clue on what the book was about. Knowing a head of time I most likely would have read it anyway. I guess with this book with amount of crazy and then troubled because this was someones childhood is enough to want to read the book. You learn to understand someones normal is another persons crazy. Thanks for sharing this story. Take care, Peace!!
Oh by the way, it was made into a movie. Go here. I think I'm going to have to check it out. A lot of big named actors are in it.
Cast: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gabrielle Union, Alec Baldwin, and Joseph Cross playing Augusten Burroughs.
I think I'm more interested in what they do with the movie. The story is very deep so I hope they capture the story without showing too much.
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