W. S. Cross

I was a little girl and thought I would grow up to be a doctor, I read everything I could about medicine, from biographies of famous women doctors to books about diseases and cures. I learned how when we get sick, we fight the disease by developing antibodies from the illness itself, at least those who survive. The antibodies stay in our blood to prevent the disease from harming us again. 

©2005 W.S. Cross

It’s the same with love, I think.  When we’re strong enough, or just lucky, we get through a violent, life-altering affair and come out on the other side better able to handle what life throws at us.

And if we aren’t strong enough, well, those are the Anna Kareninas and Sylvia Plaths. I’m not one of them, I’m a survivor.

It is clear we fall in love to heal one another, each of us lacking something at our core, inside our essential selves.  So we look for it,  singly,  serially,  in groups of two or three or more.  Like someone with a burning fever.

These photos and the text are excerpted from the novel Beyond You & Me, by W. S. Cross. Based on a journal written in 1975, and loaned to the author on the condition that the identity of the journal writer remain a secret. The resulting novel chronicles a 24 year-old married woman's journey of self-discovery as she struggles with the temptations of the Sexual Revolution. Excerpts from the book, background material, sources from the cultural touchstones of the period and even samples of music can be found at the novel's web site:  Beyond You and Me