You're Doing Just Fine Quotes

“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”
― Charlotte Eriksson, 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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore,
like I always thought I would.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“Dear me, one day I'll make you proud.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, 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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, 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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“I am not a broken heart,
and I am not your fault.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“You’re going to make something wonderful of yourself. I promise.
You’re doing just fine.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“I can’t sleep alone anymore
and I get used to
company
too quickly. You’re always gone too soon.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“It could have been so beautiful.
The way our elbows always collide and not a single word was needed to make each other laugh. I laughed at your existence, I said, and you laughed even harder and that’s how we spent our time.
It could have been so beautiful
the way the first hit felt good and something to deserve
because I’ve read every psychology book you can find on human behaviour and know for a fact that anger grows from caring
too much
and so it was a privilege to be in the war zone with someone like you.
How much you must have cared to hit that well
and that hard
and I remember saying thank you
and I’m sorry
at the same time
because what else is there to say.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, 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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“the hard part is not needing someone, looking up to someone, desiring someone, but being with someone and still staying me, as the person I’ve grown to be, and that’s why I need to leave from time to time to remind myself that I am free and me and fine with that.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine: Prose and poetry from a past that was never present

“Fear is the thing that makes the heart grow.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“I spent my days so god damn lonely around those constant talking people, but at night, as I walked on empty streets, I was not alone. I walked with the heroes of my world. With the writers and singers and talkers and thinkers and I got them. I understood them and I had the same song on repeat for nights on end because each note he took assured me that I was not alone. Someone out there knew and understood and got it and that was enough to keep those legs walking, keep this voice training, keep my fingers typing, 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 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.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine: Prose and poetry from a past that was never present