"No matter what, he loved me some days. I'm sure he did. At least now I love myself, and I don't think I would if he still loved me. I don't think I would love myself if I still loved him." The 5th book from Swedish songwriter & author, Charlotte Eriksson, is a meditation on cold love, told from every angle. That kind of love that rips your heart out a little to rearrange it and make something new of 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. 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 your own life."
_____________ "This was the year I learned to no longer depend on other people to get by, nor be stubbornly independent without any help from anyone or anything. This was the year I instead learned to say: you can depend on me. I will be your stability, you can always count on me.I said it to myself and to others, over and over until I believed it. I will stand like a lighthouse in the storm and repeat over and over: you can depend on me. This was the year I stopped begging for things to happen, and instead made them happen myself. This was the year I stopped living my life according to someone else's needs, and instead explored my own. This was the year I learned to stop begging people to love me. If someone wants to go, let them go. This was the year I learned that every person who shows up in your life is there to teach you a lesson, and they will stay until you have learned what you need to learn. Then they will leave, whether you want them to or not, and you must let them. This was the year I learned that you must dare to leave something or someone completely, leaving that space empty and aching, in order to open up space for something new. And you must know that there is a new lesson and a new person, in a new place with a new life waiting for you. This was the year I learned that what's coming is always better than what has been. Don't hold on to things that are over. Let them go, bravely."
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Quotes and poetry from Charlotte Eriksson's books have been shared on large platforms such as The Artidote, Berlin ArtParasites, Thought Catalog, Bella Grace Magazine and To Write Love On Her Arm. Her books have created a global community and have to date sold over 40,000 copies worldwide.
_____________"Can I write myself out of love? With someone who does not love me back? I surely can write myself into love-I do it all the time. I write myself in love with places and moments, characters and someone's issues. It's lovely.
How long until the sadness comes back once I've stopped writing? Right away. It comes back right away. Unless I write something magnificent and profound and that feels bigger than the sadness
or the love
which is the goal, I guess.
To write something that takes up more space than the sadness."
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For readers of Joan Didion, Patti Smith, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Rupi Kaur, Brianna Wiest, Andrea Gibson, Courtney Peppernell and Yung Pueblo.
