Book: Stitches

Stitches; A Memoir Davis Small, 2009 w.w. norton & co.
This graphic-novel type autobiography is heart-rendingly well drawn. The actual story begins on page 8. By page 15, you know this isn't a happy household. By page 20, you heart aches for this child. 329 pages, mostly illustration, even looking closely at the drawings and allowing them to sink into my soul, this book took maybe an hour to consume. Digesting it will take much longer.
There is a concept that we usually wound those around us peripherally. Oh, the wounds are real enough, and the pain may be hideous, but the damage is unintentional. They aren't about the people we inflict them upon, they are about us. They happen because we are so caught up in our own misery that we neither notice not appreciate that we are causing others pain. And that pain really exists because the other does not know that it isn't intentional, does not understand the hell their tormentor is mired in. We (or they, to keep the confusion down a bit) take it personally.
That is only part of what David Small suffered, but it is a part he came to understand. With understanding comes compassion, and compassion leads to forgiveness. Forgiveness leads healing.
Stitches will rip you apart. If you allow it, it will also stitch you back together again, using compassion as its thread.