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Charlotte Eriksson Quotes

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Famous Charlotte Eriksson Quotes

“But no one will come and save you. No one will take your hand and guide you to a better life. You must create it yourself. You must collect your mentors, dead or alive, and you must accumulate wisdom and knowledge, visions and goals. You must decide what you want with your life. You must decide who you are trying to be. This was the year I learned to no longer depend on other people to get by, nor be stubbornly independent without any help from anyone or anything. This was the year I instead learned to say: you can depend on me. I will be your stability, you can always count on me. I said it to myself and to others, over and over until I believed it myself, and I made a promise to always know that I can count on myself to simply make things work. and i will stand like a lighthouse in the storm and repeat over and over you can depend on me. This was the year I stopped begging for things to happen, and instead made them happen myself. This was the year I stopped living my life according to someone else’s needs, and instead explored my own. This was the year I learned to stop begging people to love me. If someone wants to go, let them go. This was the year I learned that every person who shows up in your life is there to teach you a lesson, and they will stay until you have learned what you need to learn. Then they will leave. If you want them to or not, and you must let them. And this was the year I learned that you must dare to leave something or someone completely, leaving that space empty and aching, in order to open up space for something new. And you must know that there is a new lesson and a new person, in a new place with a new life waiting for you. and this was the year I learned that what’s coming is always better, than what has been. Don’t hold on to things that are over. Let them go, bravely.”

“You’re lonely,” they say, but it doesn’t scare me anymore for it teaches me, and maybe that’s the biggest win from these years: I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore, like I always thought I would. I don’t break mirrors anymore, like I always thought I would. I can finally stand myself, and I never thought I would.”

“I said ”I love you so much it’s killing me” and you kept saying sorry so I stopped explaining for it never made sense to you what always did to me to let what you love kill you and never regret. As Romeo is dying Juliet says ”I am willing to die to remain by your side” and love was never a static place of rest but the last second of euphoria while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window to be able to say ”I flew before I hit the ground”, and it was glorious. Don’t be sorry. The fall was beautiful, dear. The crash was beautiful.”

“It could be yesterday when I was less in love I think For I didn’t see you in the mirror behind me while getting dressed. The way your hands couldn’t stay away and our bodies always found their ways back to each other as if they were meant to be together Close. But then it was today and I saw you again in the mirror behind me while getting dressed So I go to sleep tonight alone without actually falling asleep because I’m scared of the moment I will wake up and realise it was just a dream You’re actually gone. Now all I can do is get through to another tomorrow hoping that I will be less in love again Like yesterday But not today. I was never really well with things at all.”

“This year has taught me the simple craft of belief. I believe in the things I’ve nurtured and built this year. Slowly but carefully. Such as understanding, knowledge, passion, strength; the hundreds of songs I’ve written, the 365 poems, the books I’ve read and the miles I’ve run. The resolution to breathe, to meditate, to not harm my mind or body even when I’ve felt like it.”

“I have hope in who I am becoming. I have belief in every scar and disgraceful word I have ever spoken or been told because it is still teaching me and I have hope in who I am becoming. They say it takes 756 days to run to someone you love and they also say that the only romance worth fighting for is the one with yourself and I know by now that they say a lot of things, people talking everywhere without saying a word, but if it took me all those years to learn myself or teach myself how to look into the mirror without breaking it I know for a fact that it was a fight worth fighting. I stood up for my own head and so did my heart and we are coming to terms with ourselves. Shaking hands, saying ”let’s make this work for we have places to go and people to see and we will need each other” So I have hope in who I am becoming. It’s July and I have hope in who I am becoming.”

“It's the smell of him in the bathroom, all I need to get ready for the day. Watching him get dressed, and the sound in the kitchen; a slow hum of a song and his movements, picking things to eat. The way I could observe him, for hours, just go on with his day – or as he sleeps – simply breathing in and out, in and out, and it's like the hymn that sings me to peace. I know the world is still out there and I know I'm not yet friendly to its pace, but as long as I know him with me, here, there, somewhere – us – I know I have a chance.”

“I have a romanticised idea about dedicating myself to my work, to live and die for it and let nothing else interrupt. To live and learn all there is to live and learn in order to be a great writer, a great artist: all I came here to be.”

“I am 23 and I am learning what it means to be an artist, for I am not an artist, because it takes life and a life lived well, to the limit, to see the patterns in storms, but I am 23 and I am learning. I am learning shame and solitude, forgiveness and goodbyes. I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day, and you must build your own.”

“I turned myself into an artist because then my life would be about creating meaning out of ugliness and that would be my life, and it was noble. It was the beginning of a journey, the creating of the world every single day and I was not bored. I was ecstasy and creation and nothingness turned into melodies and I was dancing with the spirits.”

“I took him to the river and said “let’s watch something drown,” So he took a stone and I took my necklace and we threw it all together, the way I always think I will get better in July. Things will change and sounds won’t ache and I gave my heart to uncertainty so many times, and so I took him to the river, threw the necklace in the river to slowly watch it drown, or burn, or fade away like I’ve done so many times.”

“... because one day, maybe one day, if I learned how to write clear enough, sing loud enough, be strong enough, I could explain myself in a way that made sense and then maybe one day, one day, someone out there would hear and recognise her or himself and I could let them know that they are not alone. Just like that song I had on repeat for several nights as I walked lonely on empty streets, let me know that I was not alone and that’s how it starts.”

“6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was then or what day it is now. Blurred out lines from hangovers to coffee Another vagabond lost to love. 4am alone and on my way. These are my finest moments. I scrub my skin to rid me from you and I still don’t know why I cried. It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest. But then you must have changed your mind or made a wrong because why did you leave? 6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was then or what day it is now. I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottles and this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this. There is no right way to do this. There is no right way to do this.”

“I asked him why he’s so scared to commit and he said he’s not scared to commit, he’s just not in the mood to commit to me because he’s committed to himself, and I knew in that instant I wanted him more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I wanted to be with him, but I also wanted to be him, replace myself with him and find a girl like me who look at me like I looked at him when he said that.”

“I don’t think I ever told you about the night I fell down the ladder by the fire escape, because I was drunk and sad after a fight with my mum, or my ex-boyfriend, I can’t remember, but I fell down the ladder because I was drunk and sad and I injured my knee a little and when my ex-boyfriend asked about it I thought about using it against him, like blaming him for making me climb up the ladder so he would feel guilty and then love me a little more. But that’s not how love works. I know that now but I didn’t back then.”

“I was running and deliberately lost my way. The world far off and nothing but my breath and the very next step and it’s like hypnosis. The feeling of conquering my own aliveness with no task but to keep going, making every way the right away and that’s a metaphor for everything.”

“People keep asking what I do for a living and I keep saying that I don’t believe in making a living. That it’s a concept that has been twisted. I tell them I believe in making a life and money is a distracting object if there’s anything left at the end of the day and I just want to go on well. Make it through the day. So I smile and raise my glass and they laugh and take my hand, saying ”here’s to the youth”, pointing at me. And I might just be young and naive for I still believe in the freedom of choice of how to spend your life. So they toast to the youth, who still think she’s free, and that’s all fine by me.”

“Living in this skin is hard and painful, most of the times, because I never volunteered to take this on. The daily sacrifice of heart over mind, the forever ongoing task of explaining this and that, and why I don’t want to look like this and be like that but still here I am and if this is the body I’ve been given I’m sure as hell gonna make it work.”

“I was never afraid of the dark and I spent my youth walking through empty playgrounds at midnight, worried mothers telling girls to be careful and ”the world is an ugly place and not everyone wants you well”. But I was not afraid and I wished for adrenaline to make my veins pulsate in that way that puts them more on the outside of my skin than inside. After the first night with you I never walked alone at night again because suddenly I had something to lose. Something to save.”

“And this is what being an artist means, being a poet? To sacrifice yourself for your art, sacrifice your heart for your art, because it’s only through something broken that something beautiful can grow.”

“And you might try to hide or protect yourself, or compare the different states of love, but you must not grow up, must not act wise when it comes to love. You must stay foolish and fall for every heart will beat in different ways together with yours and love is not meant to be compared, only enjoyed, and suffered, and remembered.”

“There are very few friends that will lie down with you on empty streets in the middle of the night, without a word. No questions, no asking why, just quietly lay there with you, observing the stars, until you're ready to get back up on your feet again and walk the last bit home, softly holding your hand as a quiet way of saying “I'm here”. It was a beautiful night.”

“I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow for I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired but empty and weary from drinking too much at all times and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak for I don’t speak much at all and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much or not at all and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not a poem but an elegy at my best but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that, but others are not.”