Aspen Matis Memoir Quotes

I was safe in this world. This was a place for creatures - I felt I had become more of a creature than a girl. I could handle myself in the wild. ~ Aspen Matis

She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it. ~ Aspen Matis

But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was. ~ Aspen Matis

The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden's soil and grow until at last it was undeniable. ~ Aspen Matis

I walked home holding Tom's hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him. ~ Aspen Matis

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. ~ Aspen Matis

He was sprightly and uncommonly good looking, with a quiet, magnanimous confidence that attracted people. He was my hero, too, and I listened to him. He gave me lots of wise advice. He told me to put myself in win-win situations, and that, "You have to know what you want, and you have to get it, ~ Aspen Matis

I'm so drunk," I said through the bathroom door, though it wasn't true. I'd declared it to him in my anxiety to take pressure and responsibility off of myself for what I wanted to do next. I had already decided I at least wanted to kiss him, be held. Yet my desire surprised me. I felt the weight of shame not only on rape now, but on sex too. I was confused by it. I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him. ~ Aspen Matis

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

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. ~ Aspen Matis

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

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. ~ Aspen Matis

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

We aren't afraid of what we can explain. ~ Aspen Matis

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

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything. ~ Aspen Matis

The true answer held my chest like an unwanted hand's sudden touch, uncomfortable and unfeeling. ~ Aspen Matis

She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn't caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it. ~ Aspen Matis

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

Walking in solitude fixes nothing, but it leads you to the place where you can identify the malady - see the wound's true form and nature - and then discern the proper medicine.

My malady was submission.

The symptom: my compliance.

The antidote was loud clear boundaries. ~ Aspen Matis

My parents had lived in California, long ago, when they were twenty and twenty-two, also newly married. This distant knowledge romanced me like a whiff of honey, the sweet and mythic prehistory of my existence. ~ Aspen Matis

I walked, floated, lighter - forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self - forgiveness for my innocence. ~ Aspen Matis

I realized she was finding Junior innocent of rape. That meant that I was guilty of lying. ~ Aspen Matis

On this walk I'd had so much time and space to actually figure out who I was without my mother's influence. I understood now: the things that my mother had found made her happy were not the same as the things that made me happy. And I understood: that was okay. ~ Aspen Matis

I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

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

The first time I walked alone, thirteen, I was terrified. A twig snapped under my shoe; my heart revved wildly. I'd walked these sidewalks a thousand times with my mom, yet I was scared by all her fears. Don't talk to strangers, walk quickly past parked cars, look both ways, all ways, always. Be alert. There was so damn much to remember to stay safe. ~ Aspen Matis

We spent June and July in the Rockies, growing stronger, feeling feral in the untamed range of mountains. ~ Aspen Matis

Mothers are programmed to teach the fit. They are unequipped to listen to pleas, to alter their patterns. Mothers know how to nurse and nurture those who they have hope for - they coo over babies with infections they can help heal, they give advice for things they know, they protect from the dangers they know how to fear. But once their baby becomes so hurt the mother doesn't know how to heal her, she neglects because she doesn't know better. The tricks she knows don't work, she fears, and, eventually, when she is so lost she feels hopeless, she abandons. ~ Aspen Matis

Smiling at an echo of his voice on my mind's stage, I felt the void of all I hadn't said. ~ Aspen Matis

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.

It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude. ~ Aspen Matis

The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry. ~ Aspen Matis

Seamless like a fall leaf changing color, my will switched powerfully. ~ Aspen Matis

If I was going to put myself into a situation wherein I had no one to depend on, I needed to step up and be the one to actually take good care of myself.The universe wouldn't simply do it for me. ~ Aspen Matis

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

I knew with certainty now - I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No. ~ Aspen Matis

A red leaf danced from a branch like a dropping flame, down into the calm blue lake. A gust had broken it free. There was a cold bite in the wind.
It was now deep autumn in the mountains. ~ Aspen Matis

My body was smarter than I was. I was with someone who would never hurt me, and so I finally relaxed. ~ Aspen Matis

Bright yellow lemons twinkled in the twilight sun on a terrace tree, and far beyond my window, San Francisco lay, flat like a pastel toy. ~ Aspen Matis

I'd entered the bliss of Washington, physically and emotionally: eating huckleberries, feeling beautiful and finally in control of my self. Feeling the changing season, my self changed. ~ Aspen Matis

After all this time questioning whether I could trust myself, my instinct had proven right - I'd found a path in pathless woods. ~ Aspen Matis

I felt the urge to sprint, my body felt freer striding faster. I was terribly shaken, though nothing bad had happened. Intellectually it seemed that I should want to stay with Icecap and Edison. We had all smoked, I had decided to make myself vulnerable to new men, to trust them, and these boys had proven themselves to be worthy of my trust. They hadn't touched me, nothing bad had happened; I had proven my mother wrong. I had weighed the situation, I'd felt safe, and this had been my chance to remind myself that rape wasn't normal. ~ Aspen Matis

The block of sky in our twin high windows became a nectarine, amber and rose pink, and we lay in silence as white sunlight broke. ~ Aspen Matis

A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible but weren't, and so anything - great and terrible - felt possible to me now.

I wondered what else there was out in the world that I had never seen through my lenses. I had speculated about the destination of a nonexistent desert road, I'd kept going. What other magic had I wrongly explained away? I felt like I'd lost something I hadn't ever had.

A thousand things I didn't even know existed had to exist. ~ Aspen Matis

With Icecap the desert no longer felt like a severe and lonely world. It felt pristine and grand, like an ocean we could walk on, bright open water. This was our world, population: two. Whatever we did here would be the culture. The language was English, though words like "rape" and "racing" would fade out of use. ~ Aspen Matis

I had once again proven that again alone, I was again enough. ~ Aspen Matis

We were in the woods, and not a parent or a friend on earth knew where. At this moment, we were untraceable, this notion an odd pleasure. A patch of fallen leaves glowed in a pool of golden sun, and the dim forest air smelled sweet, of young lilac, invisible sage. ~ Aspen Matis

And I thought: What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I? I wanted to feel like a pretty girl, even out in Colorado with no one who knew me. To be beautiful. To live beautifully. I drew on maroon Make Me Blush lipstick. ~ Aspen Matis

She was my mirror image, slightly distorted, flipped, older, larger, more able to coexist with a pack of men. I'd be their pawn. She was their queen. ~ Aspen Matis

When tomorrow broke, our hillside home filled up with honeyed light, a fish tank. ~ Aspen Matis

I told myself that my separation from Dash was necessary. I couldn't wreck my hike for anyone, not Dash, no one. I knew this now. ~ Aspen Matis

From the moment I was first pregnant, and those around me insisted that treats such as cold cuts and nail polish could cut my unborn child's potential IQ in half, I got into the habit of NOT seeking out the little things that brought me joy. Like soft cheese. And getting too close to a Starbucks.
Then my son came, and I was too busy crying while searching for his User Manual to consider a manicure or massage.
I lasted about a week as a new mom before reaching out to others in my situation online. As exhausted, cranky, and confused as I was, I needed friends.
It didn't take long for this gaggle of desperate, sleepless women to meet up in person ... ~ Kim Bongiorno

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely. ~ David Sedaris

The morning opens, a mist of innocence appears across the countryside that tells each one of us the day is new. That feeling of hope, love and the humble awareness of our duty becomes clear if even for a moment. It is that experience of inspiration that follows us into a small town woken by a cool frost on this Sunday morning and the laughter of children playing. ~ Kris Courtney

Mr. Schlubb, the pear-shaped PE teacher, sent us all out to run half a dozen laps around a preposterously enormous cinder track. For the Greenwood kids - all of us white, marshmallowy, innately unphysical, squinting unfamiliarly in the bright sunshine - it was a shock to the system of an unprecedented order. ~ Bill Bryson

Everyone's a knucklehead at one point or another. ~ Raymond F. Jones

Accuse a person of breaking all Ten Commandments, and you've written the promo blurb for the dust cover of his tell-all memoir. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I guess this means we're uck-fayed, don't it Mikee? ~ Michael Jay

I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists. ~ Sandra Cisneros

I found that those friends of mine who welcomed the unseen into the realm of their seen offered immediate understanding. Some are Christians, some are not. Most are artists of some kind or other; artistry can extend to a way of being, of living lovingly in this world. Many seem to have almost a spiritual affinity for the unmarked trail, armed only with True North. ["Leap With Faith" Blogpost By Carolyn Weber - July 27, 2011] ~ Carolyn Weber

Having a blood family means suddenly revising a definition of family that I have, over many years, learned to accept. How can I hold both concepts in my mind or find room for both families in my heart? ~ Soojung Jo

Now the truth is, writing is a great way to deal with a lot of difficult emotional issues. It can be very therapeutic, but that's best done in your journal, or on your blog if you're an exhibitionist. Trying to put a bunch of *specific* stuff from your personal life into your story usually just isn't appropriate unless you're writing a memoir or a personal essay or something of the sort. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

God began rewriting the ending to my life's story, our worlds collided with His, and He provided us with the most beautiful second chance. ~ Shelley Taylor

It is important to measure ourselves at least once in life, undertake a personal odyssey that constructs a clarifying prism of our being. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Because when you're a 23-year old party girl who has to pee you don't really think about the possibility that your nerdy bouncer friend might suddenly start acting like a trench-coated pedophile who flashes kids at the park. ~ Kate Madison