Aspen Quotes

Aspen Quote of the day

Castes never meant that much to me.

No, I’m not choosing him or you. I’m choosing me.

I let myself be sad. I let myself think of him.

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

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

I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him

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

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

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

It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.

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

Though I was starved for contact, I didn’t stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other.

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.

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.

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.

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

In lovesickness we had found a common language.

I needed only to allow myself to know what I already knew.

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

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

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.

I needed to stop hiding: I was raped. It was time to honestly be exactly who I was. I saw—the shame wasn't mine, it was his, and I could stop misrepresenting myself, and I could accept myself.

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.

After twelve years of trying, I just decided to stop missing.

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.

Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.

It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.

I had no evidence. No physical signs of my rape existed anymore. My body had already purged them. That was the irreversible reality.

If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.

I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough.

That's why you can't give up. Heroes don't give up.

He wasn’t allowed to come with me there—my own rule for thislittle adventure.No more.Good-bye, Aspen.

You think you walk, Lucy? I think you fly. You see yourself in a uniform? I see you in a cape. You're a hero, of the quietest but most genuine nature.

Every day you say something or do something that challenges me, changes me.

I always wondered if they’d change you.

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

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.

There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes

The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.

I’d believed I needed to be steady in myself before I could function with others—but surviving alone no longer felt like a good way either.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.

I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it.

I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.

The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire.

I'd crossed a border—Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I'd been, I was no longer her.