" I have an urge to strip my life down to the bare bones to get to the core of it. I get intense and angry, accumulating layers around my essential needs, covering up my passions. These layers cover up my marks and scars, wounds and weary heart and I want it to show because sometimes I feel my only purpose here is to say: “keep going, you’re doing just fine”. And I’d like to be an example of no matter how dark and thick and hopeless it feels, for years maybe, things can and will change.
If you want them to.
If you’re determined to make them do so.
Because I’m in my twenties and I laugh and sing and spend my days doing things that matter so much to me that I’m giving up comfort and pay-checks, but I’d like everyone to know that it wasn’t always like this.
I wasn’t always like this.

I was the girl in a grey hoodie slamming the door at midnight because I’d had enough. I was the girl not knowing how to speak or walk or pave my way through schools and family dilemmas, and I never had friends because how can you when you’re not a friend to yourself and I just needed salvation. So I smoked and drank and starved and ran, escaped in any way I could, just wanting to find a way.

I’m not sure that I found a way, exactly, but I saw a sign like a light in the sky and I followed it religiously. I followed the small, broken signals telling me that “this is what you’re good at and this is what makes you smile” and I went after it. Determined to create a life for myself that made me excited to wake up.

I didn’t necessarily find a way, but I created one. And I’d like to be an example for how you can, too. "

― Charlotte Eriksson , Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself: growing up is a wonderful thing to do