photo by me.

I’ve just finished reading Goat by Brad Land for one of my classes.

Ouch. That’s what I say. This book hurt my soul to the core.

Maybe it’s because I understand him far more than anyone should. I’ve been there. I’ve done crazy things.

He writes:

…I know I’m too much for anyone, that if I let myself, I’d love them all, I’d think they could fix me. But I know they can’t, and it’s enough, because every so often when a girl kisses me, touches my hand, my face, I remember that the world has light.”

I’ve been told, time and again, that I’m too much for people. Just too much.

I’ve been afraid like Brad Land. I’ve lived with that perpetual churning of the stomach everytime I exited my front door, afraid of what the world held for me that day.

I’ve been called those names that will forever echo in my head: stupid, ugly, fat, liar, bitch. I forgot where the labels ended and I began. Words do hurt me.

I’ve bled at the hands of another, bruised, beaten, shaking with every turn.

A young woman in class today said she felt pity for Land. From the beginning to the end of the book, she felt pity. And I wondered…would she feel pity for me, too?

Maybe she doesn’t understand what torment does to the mind. What fear can do to the soul. How overwhelming it can be.

And yet, we want to go on. We cling to things. Land filled his pockets with trinkets of life to remind himself he was still among the living and to cling to the smallest remnants of sanity. I filled my life with my dogs, my photographs, my books. These were sanity.

Like Land, I’m a worrier. I worry about everything. Everything.

I worry if I’m going to fail at grad school, not fulfill my dreams. I worry that I’ll be alone forever. I worry that people at work don’t like me. I worry that I’ve upset my mother.

And through it all, like Land, I had someone to turn to. He had one brother, I had two. When he was scared, that was who he could cry to. When I’m scared, I know they will listen to my cries and try to help me through it. They’ve saved my life, much like Land’s brother saved him.

And in that one single thing, we are wealthy and blessed. Fear does not have to own us because we have something so much more powerful than that.

We have love.