Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore. Cheryl Strayed More Quotes by Cheryl Strayed More Quotes From Cheryl Strayed The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good? Cheryl Strayed self liars order I receive a lot of letters like yours. Most go on in length, describing all sorts of maddening situations and communications in bewildered detail, but in each there is the same question at its core: Can I convince the person about whom I am crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no. Cheryl Strayed communication crazy long I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake. Cheryl Strayed complexity fake terrible When going on a date with someone they met online, the number-one fear that straight women have is going on a date with a serial killer. The number-one fear straight men have is going on a date with a fat woman. That says everything. Cheryl Strayed dating numbers men There isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart. Cheryl Strayed rabbit-holes rabbits heart The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn't know where I was going until I got there.It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods. Cheryl Strayed seven-months bridges years Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. Cheryl Strayed life-changing inspirational rooms We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else. Cheryl Strayed envy voice reading It's still true that literary works by women, gays, and writers of color are often framed as specific, rather than universal, small rather than big, personal or particular rather than socially significant. Cheryl Strayed gay color literature In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole. Cheryl Strayed becoming twenties might What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was? Cheryl Strayed what-if done made She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again. Cheryl Strayed regret lying thinking We love and care for oodles of people, but only a few of them, if they died, would make us believe we could not continue to live. Imagine if there were a boat upon which you could put only four people, and everyone else known and beloved to you would then cease to exist. Who would you put on that boat? It would be painful, but how quickly you would decide: You and you and you and you, get in. The rest of you, goodbye. Cheryl Strayed goodbye believe people Be brave enough to break your own heart. Cheryl Strayed enough brave heart I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh. Cheryl Strayed motivation writing people Men's stories are seen as universal, women's as particular. What women are up against is the battle to not be marginalized. Cheryl Strayed battle stories men The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back. Cheryl Strayed life-changing inspirational giving It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself. Cheryl Strayed life-changing regret inspirational I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one. Cheryl Strayed lonely feet night Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do. Cheryl Strayed healing ordinary fun
