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In my youth I believed that to go on holiday abroad was to acquire glamour. All it would take was one week in a sunny European resort, an immersion in strangers, and I would be granted access to it. Become liberated from my homeliness, small-town experiences, from the daily sense of making do with …

A fear I often return to is whether intimacy of the self counts. Does self-knowledge have to rebound from another, be in collaboration with someone, to give you the best look at yourself? Otherwise, might I only be hearing myself as echoes? I’m afraid that if I am not seen, heard and observed in th…

I know there’s a relationship between the way I’ve spent money to try to create an image of myself that might appeal to others, and the times I’ve desired to be loved by men who were indifferent towards me. To be cured of the want for approval from those who will never give it, those who I have amb…

My default mode of self-love hasn’t fallen into either of the categories I defined earlier. Mine has been to spend money. Through spending I hoped I’d find a way to like myself more. Be more confident. Be someone people wanted to spend time with. This false promise of love got me into debt, made me…

Self-love has to include a disregard for how other people might perceive me, and living as though life is in the present, rather than something that will start in earnest once certain thresholds have been passed. I sometimes have to say aloud to myself: you do not agree that life’s worth should be …