<<< Feb 03, 2003 >>>

I had been chain-smoking all night and pacing around the house, consumed with dread about school the following morning. I had gone over my list of options in my head and the list was short: leave school now forever. My mother was in the middle of writing what she considered to be an important poem. "It's 50 pages long and I truly do believe it's going to make me a very famous woman," she said. "I don't care about that fucking poem. I'm miserable. You have to do something." I wanted to shove her typewriter on the floor. I hated it and I hated her. I wanted to be a Cosby. "You are an adult," she said. "You're 13 years old. You've got a mind and a will of your own. And I have my own needs right now. My writing is very important to me and I should hope it would be important to you." I told her to fuck herself and then stormed out of the room and went outside to sit on the porch and fume. A moment later she appeared at the door. "Dr Finch would like to speak with you on the telephone." Her voice was calm, composed, like a receptionist's. "Fine," I said. I worried I might be in trouble for terrorising my mother. "Hello?" "Well, hello there, Augusten. What's this I hear about you not wanting to go to school?" I told him about how miserable I was, how I didn't fit in, how I felt trapped and depressed and wanted to be left alone so I could go to movies and write in my journal. He listened without interrupting. "Well," he said with a deep sigh, "the only loophole, or way that I can see to get you out of school for any length of time, would be a suicide attempt. If you tried to kill yourself, then I could legally remove you from school." I was confused. "How does this happen? I mean, what do I have to do? You don't mean, like, I have to slit my wrists or something?" "No, no, no, that's not what I mean. It would be a staged suicide attempt. A ruse. But you would have to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. Basically, what would have to happen is that your poor mother would have to find you" - he chuckled under his breath, amused by the scenario - "and drive you to the hospital. You'd have to remain there for, oh, probably two weeks for observation." I confessed that I did not find the idea of staying at a psychiatric hospital that much more appealing than school. Only slightly. "It'll be like a mini vacation," he said."Where's your spirit for adventure?" Now that sounded better. Even if I wasn't exactly free, I wasn't in school. And he was right, it would be an adventure. "OK, let's do it." -- Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs, 2002

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