You're Doing Just Fine Book Summary & Quotes

“The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break for darling, the times are quite glorious. I left him by the water’s edge, still waving long after the ship was gone and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well. There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew. I used to go there to say goodbye. I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them, one way or the other, leaving sin on my body scrubbing tears off with salt and I built my rituals in farewells. Endings I still cling to. So I go to the ocean to say goodbye. He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head and though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one for I have used them myself and there is no coming back. Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay. I turned away from the ocean as not to fall for its plea for it used to seduce and consume me and there was this one night a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone. But I was younger then and easily fooled and the ocean was deep and dark and blue and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones. I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival. Then days passed by and I spent them with my work and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send. But there is this one day every year or so when the burden gets too heavy and I collect my belongings I no longer need and make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anew and it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written words and I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone. Nothing left to hold me back. You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains wrapped around my veins, and if you see a fire from the shore tonight it’s my chains going up in flames. The time of moon i quite glorious. We could have been so glorious.”

Freedom Forever Growing Up Heartbreak Burning Glorious Goodbye Farewell Drowning Goodvyes

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I was clinging to a person so hard that I did not know how to breathe when he let go and I call that an addiction.”

Love Loss Love Quotes Heartbreak Addiction Moving On Breakup Broken Heart Love Poem Clinging

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I am not a broken heart, and I am not your fault.”

Love Heart Poetry Hope Understanding Love Quotes Acceptance Heartbreak Recovery Moving On Heartache Broken Heart Book Quotes Not Fault I Am

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“It was quite a beautiful thing, the way we simply just came to be. With no effort or trying, just slowly finding each other’s hands in the dark. No chains or promises, just a simple sign of hope that things will go on and get better.”

Love Trying Hands Poetry Hope Dark Simple Relationship Chains Get Better Lover Loving Young Love Promises Go On

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

Source: You're Doing Just Fine

“… and now and then we could look up and give each other a thought, because I think he could have beautiful thoughts, and we could just let each other be less lonely in our loneliness.”

Beautiful Poetry Company Loneliness Friends Thoughts Lonely Alone Look Up Poems Prose Nostalgic Look Cafe Less Lonely

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Words never mean a thing if you don't know the lack of them, or sounds, or laughter, and it's the small moments of silence I value the most.”

Love Poetry Silence Missing Gratitude Quiet Laughter Lost Love Notice

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“What I want to know is how you go on when you look around and don’t see anywhere you want to go without the only person you can’t have.”

Love Poetry Loss Grief Sadness Missing Sad Lonely Alone Heartache Breakup Poems Look Without Anywhere

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Nothing much bothered you for a while and you kept walking like a silhouette through this town, saying hi’s and goodbyes, acting polite at all times. But there is no fire in your heart; you are not very concerned.”

Heart Poetry Lost Fire Walking Sad Concerned Alone Heartache Goodbye Polite Break Up Berlin Numb Saying Town Hi Silhouette

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains tight around my chest, and if you see a fire from the shore tonight it’s my chains going up in flames.”

Source: You're Doing Just Fine

“You can start anew at any given moment. Life is just the passage of time and it’s up to you to pass it as you please.”

Life Time Living Book Quotes New Beginnings Moment Start Passage Of Time Start Over Start Anew

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.”

Heart Fighting Growing Up Depression Breathing Day Ed Be Ok Getting Through The Day

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Take a shower. Wash away every trace of yesterday. Of smells. Of weary skin. Get dressed. Make coffee, windows open, the sun shining through. Hold the cup with two hands and notice that you feel the feeling of warmth.   You still feel warmth. Now sit down and get to work. Keep your mind sharp, head on, eyes on the page and if small thoughts of worries fight their ways into your consciousness: threw them off like fires in the night and keep your eyes on the track. Nothing but the task in front of you. Get off your chair in the middle of the day. Put on your shoes and take a long walk on open streets around people. Notice how they’re all walking, in a hurry, or slowly. Smiling, laughing, or eyes straight forward, hurried to get to wherever they’re going. And notice how you’re just one of them. Not more, not less. Find comfort in the way you’re just one in the crowd. Your worries: no more, no less. Go back home. Take the long way just to not pass the liquor store. Don’t buy the cigarettes. Go straight home. Take off your shoes. Wash your hands. Your face. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. It’s still beating. Still fighting. Now get back to work. Work with your mind sharp and eyes focused and if any thoughts of worries or hate or sadness creep their ways around, shake them off like a runner in the night for you own your mind, and you need to tame it. Focus. Keep it sharp on track, nothing but the task in front of you. Work until your eyes are tired and head is heavy, and keep working even after that. Then take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more.  You’re doing just fine. You’re doing fine. I’m doing just fine.”

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“So now it’s this thing I do. I go away, ever so often, by myself, for myself, to new places with foreign streets I haven’t walked yet, and there I wander, up and down, watching people going places I don’t know and it always hits me that they’re never alone, always with someone, and I wonder how they would spend a day all on their own in a foreign city with nothing to do and no one to see, and I wonder if they’d be happy. Just simply being free, like I am trying to be. Happy. Just simply being me.”

Loneliness Walking Travel Lonely Leaving Happy Wander Free Places

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Seasons happened and things got colder and harder and suddenly I found myself smoking circles in the air by myself in the snow and I was not okay.”

Loneliness Cold Sad Lonely Seasons Snow Alone Smoking Not Okay

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“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.”

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“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.”

Heart Together Young Poetry Youth Sad Depression Recovery Alone Get Better Prose Ache July River Fade Away Burn Times Stone Sounds Drown Necklace

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore, like I always thought I would.”

Growing Up Acceptance Balance Mindfulness Harmony Prose Eating Disorders Myself Charlotte Eriksson Ed

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

Source: You're Doing Just Fine

“You become a house where the wind blows straight through, because no one bothers the crack in the window or lock on the door, and you’re the house where people come and go as they please, because you’re simply too unimpressed to care. You let people in who you really shouldn’t let in, and you let them walk around for a while, use your bed and use your books, and await the day when they simply get bored and leave. You’re still not bothered, though you knew they shouldn’t have been let in in the first place, but still you just sit there, apathetic like a beggar in the desert.”

People Care Poetry House Loss Grief Doors Books Wind Bed Lonely Recovery Alone Desert Bored Poems Numb Leave Apathetic They Tumblr Poetry Let In Unimpressed Tumblr Writers

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Fear is the thing that makes the heart grow.”

Heart Strong Fear Growth Courage Brave Fearless Brevity Facing Fear

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls with clean blood and organized drawers. I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests at night when no one else is alive or awake however you choose to see it and I live in my own flames sometimes burning too bright and too wild to make things last or handle myself or anyone else and so I run. run run run far and wide until my bones ache and lungs split and it feels good. Hear that people? It feels good because I am the slave and ruler of my own body and I wish to do with it exactly as I please”

Body Fire Alive Blood Alone Awake Ache Burn Bright

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

Source: You're Doing Just Fine

“So I am not a broken heart. I am not the weight I lost or miles or ran and I am not the way I slept on my doorstep under the bare sky in smell of tears and whiskey because my apartment was empty and if I were to be this empty I wanted something solid to sleep on. Like concrete. I am not this year and I am not your fault. I am muscles building cells, a little every day, because they broke that day, but bones are stronger once they heal and I am smiling to the bus driver and replacing my groceries once a week and I am not sitting for hours in the shower anymore. I am the way a life unfolds and bloom and seasons come and go and I am the way the spring always finds a way to turn even the coldest winter into a field of green and flowers and new life. I am not your fault.”

Broken Cold Empty Drinking Bones Drunk Apartment Day Break Up Every Day

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.”

Inspiration Meditation Lonely Alone Mastery Being City Crowd Charlotte Eriksson Floor

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“Dear me, one day I'll make you proud.”

Motivation Inspiring Pride Proud Future One Day Goals Grow Up The Glass Child Self Fulfillment

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I am not sad anymore. I am not weak or tender or quiet like you remember because the second you said those words and closed that door, I sold my soul to the part of myself I had buried in order to love you, to let you touch every inch of my rotten body, for I wanted to be touchable and not so strange. Not so sad and tender, like I’ve always been, they say, so I changed. And then your glances and words throwing knives with no return about my change of habits and ways of living, being, and I nodded and smiled, dying silently a little bit inside.”

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“It was quite a sad thing, the way I watched you sleep like nothing could go wrong and I did not want to harm it, I did not want to blur it, but how could I not when everything I’ve ever known has slowly gone away.”

Poetry Sleep Sadness Lovers Poem Sad Scared Harm Alone Wrong Afraid Blur Gone Away

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

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“I can’t sleep alone anymore and I get used to company too quickly. You’re always gone too soon.”

Love Poetry Night Sleep Company Gone Sadness Missing Loneliness Sad Heartbreak Lonely Alone Insomnia I Miss You Miss Can T Sleep Chapbook Too Soon

Book:You're Doing Just Fine

Source: You're Doing Just Fine

You're Doing Just Fine

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You're Doing Just Fine Quotes