Running With Scissors: A Memoir

Content Warning: This section features graphic depictions of sexual assault of a minor, drug use, discussions of suicide, domestic violence, and derogatory language in reference to people with mental health conditions.

“I love shiny things, I love stars. Someday, I want to be a star like my mother, like Maude.”

As a child, Augusten deeply admires and respects his mother and wants to be just like her. He spends much of his free time engaging in enactments, emulating his mother’s actions, and reciting her poems. Augusten grows up in a chaotic environment with parents who despise one another. He learns to cope with this chaos through perfectionism in his appearance and the cleanliness of his room and belongings. Over time, Augusten’s worship of his mother changes into a feeling of detachment.

“I could polish my 14k gold-plated signet ring with a Q-tip until the gold plating wore off even if I couldn’t stop my parents from throwing John Updike novels at each other’s heads.”

Augusten realizes that his obsession with shiny things and cleanliness doesn’t seem normal and results from a coping mechanism he developed in response to his parents’ toxic relationship. His early life is largely defined by the way his parents interact with one another, and he bears witness to their abuse and violence. This unwittingly prepares him for the chaos he endures later on with the Finches.

“As my mother saw more and more of Dr. Finch over the year, I needed to be reminded constantly that he was a real doctor.”

Augusten foreshadows Dr. Finch’s malpractice and the harm that he causes over the coming years. When he’s first introduced to Dr. Finch, the doctor doesn’t fit the stereotype of what Augusten envisions a doctor to be. He’s instead overly casual, sexual, and aloof regarding medication. Eventually, Augusten starts spending time with the Finch family and then moves in with them, and he learns the true extent of Finch’s oddness as well as its effect on his family.