Aspen Matis Memoir Quotes

Aspen Matis Memoir Quote of the day

The small word, “No.” I’d see its deity.

In lovesickness we had found a common language.

I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred.

She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions — to earn my own trust.

These tools were my parents’ way of saying: What you’re doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way.

I was desperate not to confront the fact that this really could be it—that "nineteen" didn't matter, that there really was a point at which even young bodies fail. I was not immortal.

He understood. In lovesickness we had found a common language.

It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.

I walked without breaks, slept through nights without waking, inhumanly smooth – a small machine.

My malady was submission.The symptom: my compliance.The antidote was loud clear boundaries.

I was no longer following a trail. I was learning to follow myself.

Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

Childhood is a wilderness.

I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.

She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement—a rebellion. I didn’t try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive.

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing.

Children believe they are immortal, death is an empty word like the name of a country they’ve never been to on a time-faded map. I wasn’t a child anymore.

I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.

Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This journey had begun with the coercion of my body, with my own wild hope.

Each year, Gracie Henderson moons a thousand strangers, collects their shocked faces in an annual photo album.

Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.

You don’t need extra food, extra water, extra clothing for extra warmth – anything extra. You don’t need soap or deodorant. Everything you carry you should need daily.

As if violence could make light. Maybe violence could make light.

We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.

My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.

My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.

Living as Wild Child, I could no longer be Debby Parker comfortably — this name that I’d been given at birth that defined me before I’d had the chance to define myself.

I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves.

I began to lust after our conjoining life.

Happy people have everything to give.

Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born.

I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

The PCT would lead me to an otherworld, through the sadness I felt here, out of it.