Quotessence
Home / Books / He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss

He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss

Book by Charlotte Eriksson · 31 quotes · Love, Heartbreak, Lonely

Filter quotes by topic

He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss Quotes

“You know those people you meet who just feel safe? They radiate certainty and belonging, like everything will be okay for them, because they know how to make things okay. If you’re lucky enough to spend a day with them they will go on with their lives and let you be a tourist in there. They make each moment their own, in small ways, like having preferences about the music, the colours, the smells, the direction, the order of things. And they will talk about their lives in a way that doesn’t leave any space for questioning. It’s not like … hello, this is my life, do you think it’s okay? Like I do … It’s more like: “Hey, this is my life! It’s nice, isn’t it? Now show me yours!”

“You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful. when you don’t avert your eyes but keep them steady or when you stay the night, the last one at the party, and you don’t feel sorry. or empty. or guilty because whatever, where are you going anyway?”

“There is a switch in the air tonight. It’s not suffocating, like breakups all those years ago, but clean and clear. He does not want me anymore so I tilt my head, take a breath and say, “Okay. I understand.” It’s calm now. My heart didn’t break, it kept on beating like a stoic marching forward without looking back, and I will be a writer now. I love so many people, still. I think I will write about them forever.”

“People come and go all the time but I’ve built a castle around me, making it hard for anyone to enter. I just want to feel safe. I just want to be fine. But then someone leaves and I am alone and now I wish for nothing more than people people all kinds of people to come into my castle where we can sit in a ring and hold hands and tell stories and keep warm. Everyone would be welcome. Everyone would just love each other and I would heal. slowly. remembering all the things I’ve written before. but it’s so hard now. poetry says so little some days. but i know it will, soon, again. I have no one around so I talk to myself, turned the mic on one night and somewhere on the way I formulated proper thoughts and real ideas, and my heart felt a little better after every hour and I fell in love with the thought that maybe by sharing the things that keep me up at night, I could help someone else, maybe? Or just, have a conversation with you? If you care? I would love to let you in—into my castle—the door is open. It’s like ... I’m sitting on a chair with my hands resting on my legs, palms turned open to the sky. I have so little in me, but I would give you whatever I can. just … stay? a little? hold my hand? tell me something. Loneliness is so hard when you’re left in it.”

“sometimes i call someone up from my past just to make me feel something. to remind myself that someone stepped out of my life because he didn’t find it exciting here anymore and it’s a great thing to do if you ever want to feel something. if you get bored of emotional stability. call someone up from your past and just talk a bit. chat about his new life with new exciting people, let him hang up without asking a question of you and then look at the lonely water glass on your table and remember that you’re hungry and that it’s 3 a.m. and you’re still up alone.”

“You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful. when you don’t avert your eyes but keep them steady or when you stay the night, the last one at the party, and you don’t feel sorry. or empty. or guilty because whatever, where are you going anyway? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ i used to sit here, in this same pub in this same city 7 years ago, writing another book, like i am now again and i wrote myself out of heartbreak with that book like i am now i guess. in some ways maybe i’ve written myself into heartbreak this time but i’m coming out of it. at least i find other people beautiful again. they make me smile. maybe more than i have before and i have a good feeling about things. You know you’ve moved on when you find other people beautiful.”

“This person that now keeps you safe will one day talk to you from behind a dark wall of something you cannot understand and you will stamp your feet for a while, for a year, until you give up. You will let your arms fall down, close your mouth, close your eyes, turn around and walk away. It will happen again and again.”

“I was still sad and heartbroken, desperately trying to get him back. But it only took one night with someone new who looked at me like I was pretty special to make me realise I had made a world out of one single person and that’s pretty limiting because, you know, the world is pretty limitless. There are people out there who will love you like you love them and all that jazz...”

“It’s like ... I’m sitting on a chair with my hands resting on my legs, palms turned open to the sky. I have so little in me, but I would give you whatever I can. just … stay? a little? hold my hand? tell me something. Loneliness is so hard when you’re left in it.”

“This is a story about love and how not to love and sometimes exactly how to love, but mostly how to love something other than your love for another person because in the end you have to save yourself. And when the love is gone you must have love left for your own life. You must place that love in something more solid than a fleeting person, because when it’s gone you have to have love left for life.”

“I’ll find my group one day. Friends I belong with, a city, a community, a place to get all those ideas out and let them be heard and appreciated. I’ll be something one day. I know I will.
 For now I’m walking lonely in Prague at Christmas, feeling like the happiest, most unknown girl in the world.”

“Loneliness is dependent on not loving very many things or people so you should try to love as many things and people as you possibly can because the loneliness can’t survive when there is too much love around.”

“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 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 am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when something goes wrong. I think I have a dream, but most of the days I’m still sleeping. The grass is cut. It smells like strawberries. Today I finished four books and cleaned my drawers. Do you believe in a God? Can I tell you about Icarus? How he flew too close to the sun? I want to make coming home your favourite part of the day. I want to leave tiny little words lingering in your mind, on nights when you’re far away and can’t sleep. I want to make everything around us beautiful; make small things mean a little more. Make you feel a little more. A little better, a little lighter. The coffee is warm, this cup is yours. I want to be someone you can’t live without. I want to be someone you can’t live without.”

“I never told you about the trip to Portugal 3 years ago when I read Fernando Pessoa at 1 a.m. outside a small family-run restaurant by the harbour. If I close my eyes I can still smell the salt water and the fish, some sort of cleaning powder scent from the kitchen, can still feel the heat, a soft wind and me sitting with wide open eyes on my own at 1 a.m. writing what I thought was profound and excellent. I felt like a writer then. I was not a girlfriend or a daughter or a songwriter who never got signed—I was a writer in the truest sense and I lived in my own flames.”

“That was the winter of learning empty space. Learning a tight pressure around my chest, waiting to explode and break out. But no matter how far you travel or how long you wander, how cold it grows or how drunk you get, the tight pressure just stays in there. You meditate, pray, fast and run, thinking it’s some kind of detoxification process. A stone of toxic memories from all things yesterday and you just need to release it, let go and clean yourself pure. But the stone stays in there. A big, black stone of heaviness. Sadness.”