Home > Author > Caroline Kaufman
21 " Find yourself in a page. Look at where you are. Find your past in the pages before. Look at all that you have survived. Find your future in the pages after. Look at all that you have ahead.This is not the end of your book. You are right at the heart of it. Keep reading. "
― Caroline Kaufman , Light Filters In: Poems
22 " writing was not a stageor a museum exhibit—it was an echo chamber,a way to talk to someone,even if that someonewas my own voicebouncing back at me. "
23 " The happiness will come slowly, the way light filters in through the window in the early morning hours. So slowly you don't even notice the night is ending,until you wake up and see the sunlight. "
24 " I’ve spent so much time trying to become who I should be that I lost myself along the way. "
25 " I know you want to drown yourself in the sadness. It’s comforting to let it surround you, heart pulsing, lungs aching as you feel it overwhelm every inch of your skin and diffuse into your cells. But I hope you know sadnessis a revolving door. once you’re in it, letting the sadness take you around and around and around, it won’t stop on its own. You’ll just keep going around and around and around. That’s why you need to fight to stop it, fight to stop spinning, fight to get out. Get out of that infinite sadness. "
26 " He tells me, you are a complicated person to love. I know, I reply. I struggle with it every day. "
27 " There are times that I am doing so well, I stop taking my meds. And suddenly I feel like the light switch has flipped off. And suddenly I feel like I am not better because of my hard work.And suddenly I feel like a fraud. I try to remind myself that the brain is an organ, that this is a disease, that diabetics need insulin and no one thinks of that as cheating. I try to remind myselfthat this is not a boost, this is a treatment. So I swallow my pride along with my pills and let myself get better. "
28 " it is hard to be proud of how far you’ve come when there will always be miles and miles ahead of you. "
― Caroline Kaufman , When the World Didn't End
29 " for all of our wounds will be healed with time. "
30 " How will my mental illness affect my romantic relationships? What will happen when I become emotionally vulnerable? Will they stay? "
31 " So I’ll write you an ocean, I’ll write you a sky, and hope that’s enough for you. "
32 " all is fair when love’s a war, and every day is a fight. "
33 " Last nightI felt it.happiness.I didn’t recognize the spark at first.I had forgotten what it was like.but then,there it was.a flash of light.a second of warmth.a glimmer of hopewhen all I had for yearswas darkness.and just the ideathat this might not last foreveris motivation enoughto keep going. "
34 " The doctor rolls up my sleeves and asks if the marks are new. I tell her yes, but that it was after three months of being clean. The therapist pulls back my exosphere. It’s hard for me to let someone look at the storms. But I let her anyway. I’m trying, and maybe I’m not succeeding, but it’s a start. "
35 " You don’t look like a complete thought. You are paused at a semicolon placed by a careless author. I’m waiting for the second half of the sentence when maybe there isn’t even one at all. "
36 " I was so distracted by getting to the finish line that I forgot to pace myself. I was so distracted by growing up that I forgot the basics along the way. "
37 " The happiness will come slowly, the way light filters in through the window in the early morning hours. So slowly you don’t even noticethe night is ending, until you wake up and see the sunlight. "
38 " you’re getting good at remembering to say just kidding at the end of every self-deprecating joke. at tagging on an lol when the text seems too angry. queen of backtracking, champion of invalidating your own feelings, a professional at wanting them to understand, but also wanting them to stay comfortable. you’re getting good at ending on a positive note. on a high note, just a half step above what they’re all expecting. "
39 " because maybe if you write an entire poem on self-loathing, just to say something nice in the very last line, that will balance out everything else. (we both know that will not balance out everything else.) but sometimes it’s nice to pretend. to hope a bit of good will outweigh the bad. to believe changing one note in the final chord will make them forget they were ever in a minor key at all. "
40 " to have your favorite moment be the moment right in front of you. looking back, that’s all I ever wanted. for the best part of my life to always be the present. "