I will love you not just for your wit and talent and beauty, but simply because you are you, with no strings attached. I love you for who you are deep in your soul, not for the color of your eyes or the length of your legs or the size of your checkbook. The longing is that the lover admire us stripped of our external assets, appreciating the essence of our being without accomplishments, ready to repeat the unconditional love said by some to exist between parent and child. The real self is what one can freely choose to be, and if a birthmark arises on our forehead or age withers us or recession bankrupts us, then we must be excused for accidents that have damaged what is only our surface. And even if we are beautiful and rich, then we do not wish to be loved on account of these things, for they may fail us, and with them, love. I would prefer you to compliment me on my brain than on my face, but if you must, then I would rather you comment on my smile [motor and muscle-controlled] then on my nose [static and tissue-based]. The desire is that I be loved even if I lost everything, leaving nothing but "me," this mysterious "me" taken to be the self at its weakest, most vulnerable point. Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have forever?
However happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily prevents us [unless with live in a polygamous society] from starting other romantic liaisons. But why should this constrain us if we truly loved them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already begun to wane? The answer perhaps lies in the uncomfortable thought that in resolving our need to love, we may not always succeed in resolving our need to long.
(...) It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.
(...) I felt lonely but, for once, this was a gentle even pleasant kind of loneliness because, rather than unfolding against a backdrop of laughter and fellowship, in which I would suffer from a contrast between my mood and the enviroment, this loneliness unfolds in a place where everyone was a stranger, where the difficulties of communication and the frustrated longing for love seemed to be acknowledged and brutally celebrated by the architecture and lighting.
It may be easier to give way to sadness here than in a living room with wallpaper and framed photos. the decòr of a refuge that has let us down. (...) In a variety of underfined ways, home appears to have betrayed them, forcing them out into the night or on to the road. the twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room or motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world.
My name is Gabrielle and I am twenty-eight years old. I began to self-injure at age fifteen -- so nearly thirteen years -- minus a two year period. This website was made to let self-injurers know that they are not alone and to help their friends and family learn more about self-injury and how it affects their loved one.
