Ashly Lorenzana Quotes

Drugs don't really fix anything, except for everything.

We judge others instantly by their clothes, their cars, their appearance, their race, their education, their social status. The list is endless. What gets me is that most people decide who another person is before they have even spoken to them. What's even worse is that these same people decide who someone else is, and don't even know who they are themselves.

It's so hard to find the place somewhere in the middle of the best and worst I've felt.

Don't be scared of scars. They just tell stories that are hard to hear.

Remember that every person who you come into contact to on any given day has a story that is probably far more amazing than you will imagine and no one is going to just offer up their entire life's worth of experiences to you because you want them to.

It takes time to draw someone's story out from within them. It takes trust. It takes sincerity and dedication.

Keep in mind that each and every interaction you have with all those people on a daily basis is a unique opportunity to develop any kind of relationship with that person that the two of you might want to be a part of.

It doesn't matter how you meet them or what it is that you do with them.

It can be as mundane as waving to them in the morning as they leave their driveway, or it can be as huge as saving someone's life in a moment of uncertainty and sacrifice.

Each person has the potential to become a friend or a lover or to simply teach you something important and then slip back into the endless rush of other bodies moving about the planet around us.

Don't pass these chances up too often, or you'll get lost in the tide yourself.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but neither does one. Revenge may seem petty by day, but on some nights she becomes Justice.

Yeah, I'm a drug addict. And a prostitute. The whole world knows. Not because I robbed my own family. Not because I ended up behind bars. Not because I've been hassled by the cops when soliciting customers from a local street corner. Not because I'm shooting up in the public bathrooms at your city park. Everyone knows because I told them all. I never tried to hide any of it. I never felt the need to.

I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.

Don't kid yourself by saying that one time can't make you addicted. It can. I believed it couldn't too when I first tried meth. I was so, so wrong. The worst part about it is that you won't realize what has happened immediately afterwards. Addiction is a gradual process and it doesn't happen overnight. But trust me when I tell you that one time is all that it takes to set this into motion. It can and it will.

You know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don't stay children forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some people grow up sooner, many grow up later. Some never really do. But just remember that some people in this world are older versions of those same kids we cry for.

My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss.

Storytellers don't show, they tell. I'm sticking with that.

Dogs are how people would be if the important stuff is all that mattered to us.

Some people like living in black and white worlds. Let them stay there. Appreciate all the colors you see in your world though.

If you manage to live long enough, most of your greatest fears become fond memories to look back on.

I don't possess these thoughts I have
they possess me. I don't possess these feelings I have
They obsess me.

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her.

Everyone has a unique problem of their own, an issue that follows them throughout life and never goes away. You discover it early and go on to struggle with it for the rest of your life, almost until it eventually becomes an old enemy that you lose the will to fight or hate anymore. And just as every person has their own void, their own haunt or their own unanswered question ... they also have the power to turn it into a legacy every bit as profound as they make it.

The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a matter of fault from either person. Some things cannot be, it's as simple as that.

I'm not crying out for help, but I am sharing my experience in the hopes that readers will get something out of it. I'm not the one who gets to decide what that is, if anything. I'm just starting the "journey" if you will, so I can't possibly know yet what the "message" of my life really is. I only know what has happened so far, and how I've felt up until this moment. I agree that reading about the pain of others is concerning when they are still hurting and in the same situation as when they wrote about it. But what can you do? You can reach out, ask how you can help and be there to listen. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. You can't love someone who doesn't love themselves enough to take care of themselves and stay out of bad situations. Believe me, I know this.

Phones with numerical keypads worked best for dialing phone calls. Incidentally, phone calls tend to be the primary function of a phone. 'Smartphones' completely ignore these basic facts, resulting in some of the least intelligent devices I've seen yet. Oh the irony.

The only unique contribution you can offer the world is to be who you actually are and no one else.

I can pretty much guarantee that you will at some point find yourself doing something that at one point you swore you'd never do. You'll do it for the sake of getting high, either directly or indirectly. Trust me. It will happen. You might think you know yourself better than anyone, but you have yet to become acquainted with your addiction. It will introduce itself in ways that you never thought were possible.

I think it's better to be comfortable in your skin than to be miserable being who you are. Sure, the meth is horrible. It ruins people from the inside out. It's a waiting game
it's not a matter of if it destroys you, but rather a matter of when it will. I've made it this far. I'm not sending a message that it's "cool" to be on drugs and tell everyone about it. I don't sum myself up as a drug addict and a hooker. That's not what I am. Those are juts things I do, they don't define me. Jobs and addictions do not make us who we are.

The more fucked up you are, the more I like you. As long as you've managed to hold onto your identity through all the shit, then it won't matter how twisted you are. I will love you more for it.

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.

The easiest way to gain someone's trust is to deserve it. This should be pretty easy, assuming you're just being you and being real. Minimal effort too.

A selfless act out of even the purest desire to do for others, will be selfish in the satisfaction and happiness it brings to one doing it.

Some people are as angry as they seem to be only because it's the safest place to hide from more pain.

Trees lose their leaves in blizzards like these.

What is the point of our lives? There isn't any. I can't seem to decide how much horror and how much joy lies within that simple truth, but I know it is both of those things at once.

Most of the pain we feel is nothing more than a story that needs telling.

No original thought still exists. People are original, each one of them. The same ideas that others had before you are waiting for you to bring them back to life in a new way. The part of who you are that is left behind within these old ideas is what makes them original all over again.

I'd much rather buy an experience than something I can possess in the material world

No one is fighting for my freedom unless they are doing it on my soil.

The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone.

Never do anything that you can't admit doing, because if you are that ashamed of whatever it is, it's probably wrong.

While it's true that I am guided in life by my feelings and emotions, that certainly does NOT mean that I trust them.
Emotions are reactions to things based on all of a person's prior experiences and we forget sometimes just how limited those are.

Your whole life and the story of your journey is the landscape picture on the front of the box of a 1,000 piece puzzle. The pieces are each a small sticky note that ends in mid-sentence. You simply need to figure out where each one starts and ends.

Anything at all is possible. Some things are unlikely. Some things will never happen. But they always could, at any time.

Drugs suck more than anything else I have ever liked so much.

I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.

It might be depressing, but it's also the truth that no one has the power, the money, or the resources to save everyone on the planet from going hungry, living in poverty or allowed basic human rights. But consider the other side of this: there are people in this world who truly WOULD do all of these things for everyone if only they could. There is hope after all.

Just remember that those who feel profoundly depressed are those whose happiness is likewise intense. What's so wrong with that?

Love is an awfully personal thing for most of us, so why isn't hate?

The parts of me that hurt the worst want me to write something for them, but I can't. I don't know what to say. I'm lost in all this sadness, and so are they.

Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.

A lot of things in life won't make sense, so be sure to make the most sense out of those that do.

If somebody never gets enough of you, they will always want more

The fact of the matter is that you should really stop concerning yourself with writing a book because anyone can write a book that totally sucks. There is nothing special about that.

It may be a man's world, but men are easily controlled by women.

You never know what lurks just beneath the surface of my fragile sanity.

How much of what is there do you allow yourself to see?

​You can always tell when someone deserves the praise and recognition they receive, because it humbles them rather than inflating their ego.

How good something is should never be determined by its cost, designer, origin, or its perceived value by others.

It starts as a little nagging noise inside my skull, reminding me of what I think I know, and what I can never ever really know. And the noise sets to work inside my head, perpetuating its same pattern until it has grown so loud and so great, it is the only thought I can have. The only obsessive, earth-shattering sound of not mattering that I can hear. It's entirely made up of the pain felt by something already hurt too much. It's like the ruins of something destroyed by being hurt, and how awful it is to exist so alone, as ruins.

I was unhappy there and going through a rough transition, so I was desperate for any friend I could find that I could talk to. I thought that's what he was. We had this secret from my mom, who I didn't like much at the time. It was a harmless secret, so I didn't feel bad about it. All we did was go to the movies and hang out doing fun things all day. It wasn't until much later that the warning signs began, but I was still too young and stupid to see them for what they were at the time. Basically, he was patient as he built up the trust between us. He became a close friend and convinced me that he was on my side somehow. He took total advantage of my ignorance and totally betrayed me a few years later, when he slept with me. After my mom found out, she went psychotic and all she gave a fuck about was what had been done to her. She didn't care about anything except for how hurt she was by what had happened. She blamed me and him equally, telling me that sixteen years old was old enough to know better. Even though I never initiated a goddamn thing with him, and never would have. Even though it happened in the apartment she and I had gotten together, that he was not supposed to be staying in.

Everything either is, was or will be. Time doesn't really exist. It's just something we have made up that makes it easier for us to grasp the universe.

Money is necessary in everyone's life. Why? Only because people have decided that it should be. It didn't have to be the way that it has become. If nothing came at the price of money, it wouldn't need to exist.

All we know is what we're told.

I say fuck the old advice 'show, don't tell.' It's called story TELLING for a reason, and I'll stick to it!

And so an awful confusion begins to collect, forming a cloud that sits around an absence of hope. Desperate sensations. Can't breath. Panic. Just trying to catch my breath, but I can't breath. I hurt so much, and I'm so tired that I don't even want to breath the breath I'm gasping for. There is no more. This is the most. It's just pain, channeled in one direction, using you as its host.

It took me years to stop feeling the guilt she made sure I kept feeling about what happened with him. He is a sick person that molests children, but I felt so bad about it for so long. I couldn't talk to a single person about any of this. No one. And she made me feel so bad about it all that I felt I shouldn't talk about it, even if there was someone. I felt ashamed and thought I was an awful person. Sometimes I still do. My mother abandoned me in the worst ways possible.

No one truly knows what they will do in a certain situation until they are actually in it. It's very easy to judge someone else's actions by what you assume your own would be, if you were in their shoes. But we only know what we THINK we would do, not what we WOULD do.

There is nothing worse than having an enemy who is a total loser. It's incredibly frustrating when seeking revenge against one, because you come to the realization that there is really nothing you can do to make the person's life worse than it already is. They have nothing to take, there is no way to screw them over if you have been their victim. It's maddening.

I have been known to think outside of all rules. Even my own.

If you're going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you're going to half-ass it, why bother?

If you love yourself the most at your happiest moments, there is no reason not to be fond of who you are in the dark.

Morality and legality have nothing to do with one another. I'm more than fine with breaking a law if it disagrees with my values and morals.

Nothing in the tangible word that isn't living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to instead learn to place value on the treasures of the mind. Memories, knowledge and skill together are the only things we will ever actually own.

It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.