Reconsidering

I mentioned that I’ve been reading a lot of books because it’s a good distraction and its fun so you know.

Well, last night I finished a book, Flowers in the Attic. Do any of you remember this book? This was the book you read as teenagers, and hid from your parents because you knew it was weird and creepily indulgent and that they would not approve? I saw it at the library the other day and thought, “Holy heck this book is psycho and I don’t know why but I need to read it again!” And read it I did, my friends, read it I did.

So, briefly: four kids in the family. Mom and dad and kids, living in the 50’s; a happy typical nuclear family. But then Dad dies in a fiery car crash. And Mom can’t afford to live on her own with the kids, so she moves them all to their mysterious grandmother’s house that they’ve never met or heard anything about.

They are kept in the attic because the grandmother is a psycho hose beast who doesn’t want her husband to know they exist, you see, because their mother had run off with her half-uncle and married him (her dad’s younger half-brother) and he couldn’t forgive that nor would he want to meet the “Devil’s spawn.” (aka half-inbred kids.) So they’re kept up in the attic, never allowed to go outside or even leave the room, and they say they can come down when the grandfather dies, which is supposed to be any day now. Only he never dies, and the kids stay in there for years. The two twins who are five stop thriving and growing and eating. The older two, a boy and a girl, start going through puberty and dealing with their burgeoning sexuality and it’s getting smothered because they can never be around people or date or interact with anyone, and well, they kinda start falling in love with each other. Or really I should say lusting with each other?

And then the grandma like beats them for doing that and withholds food for them and even puts tar in their hair and THEN the mom stops loving them and wants the inheritance she’ll get if she keeps them hidden so she starts slowly putting arsenic in their food to poison them so they'll die and then she runs off with a newer, handsomer husband, and they’re all dying and like incestuous, and they eventually find a way to escape. And when they do, they are motherless, fatherless, one sibling has died, they’re small and sick and malnourished, and are completely alone with no family or money or anything. Plus they had sex. I can’t get over that part.

And I think I’m reconsidering. My life could be waaaaaay worse, right? Read the book if you think your life sucks, cuz boy it doesn’t suck till your brother gives you a line like “I’m so sorry I raped you” and you answer back, “Oh it’s alright, I think I could have stopped you if I really wanted to.” (Now let’s kiss and make up.)

The book was, well, incredibly creepy. But I couldn’t stop turning the pages, like the sick bastard I am. GROSS AND OMG WOW pretty much sums up the book.

But my life? I really do feel better about it. Cuz at least I ain’t no flower in the attic.