(...) 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.
It is perhaps sad books that console us most when we are sad, and the pictures of lonely service stations that we should hang on our walls when there is no one to hold or love.
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.
