Captains-log.

Just for future reference, don’t use words like “love” anymore. It’s a very sensitive word and it wears out quickly. Romeo barely says it, but John Hinckley filled up a whole journal with it. To put it into your terms, it’s a currency that’s easily devalued. Pretty soon you’re saying it whenever you hang up the phone or whenever you leave. It turns into an apology. Then it’s an excuse. Some assholes want it to be a bulletproof vest: don’t hate me; I love you. But mostly it just means—more. More, more—give me something more. A couple of years from now, when you’re on your own completely, if you really fall in love, if it really comes to that—and I pity you if it does—you have to look right down into the black of her eyes, right down into the emptiness in there and feel everything, absolutely everything she needs and you have to be willing to drown in it, Kevin. You’d have to want to be crushed, buried alive. Because that’s what real love feels like—choking. They used to bury some women in their wedding dresses, you know. I thought it was because all those husbands were too cheap to spring for another gown, but now it makes sense: love is your first foot in the grave. That’s why the second most abused word is “forever

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?