Charlotte Eriksson
Charlotte Eriksson (The Glass Child) is an author, songwriter, dreamer and wanderer from Sweden, but is currently living somewhere in Europe. She has published five books of prose and poetry, telling stories of growing up, searching for a home, life on the road and learning how to bloom in solitary places. Her books have been widely shared and embraced by like-minded communities such as To Write Love On Her Arms, The Artidote, Wordporn and The Good Quote, wracking up hundreds of thousands of likes, shares and comments on each post. Writings and poems from the books have been published on sites such as Thought Catalog, Rebelle Society, Bella Grace Magazine and Open Minds Quarterly.
"I believe in writing your own story, and that's what I'm doing here. Do you wait for things to happen or do you make them happen yourself?"
You can read more about Charlotte's books and music on her website: http://www.CharlotteEriksson.com
And you can follow Charlotte's writings and journey on:
- http://www.instagram.com/justaglasschild
- http://www.charlotteeriksson.com/writ...
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I'm messy and I'm organized and I'm still trying to piece my own self together. I can't sleep at night because how could I close my eyes when there's a whole world out there, calling my name, waiting to be explored. I love intelligent conversations while laying on empty streets at 5am in the morning, and I love watching the sun rise over a world that is still asleep. I make mistakes and I mess up a lot, but I'm trying to learn how to be okay with that. Some days I couldn't care less about what all of you think about my art because this is my life and all I have. But then there are days when all I want is to be beautiful and good enough and someone to count on. Someone to like and love and believe in. I just really want to mean something to someone.
I believe in the future, for I have seen yesterday, and I'm still alive. I laugh a lot and I believe in the beauty in small things, like the coffee in the morning with someone you love, road-trips to nowhere and oceans. People fascinate me because I can't seem to understand them, and they rarely understand me. The way they can live and breathe and simply be, when I can't even look myself in the mirror without questioning every line. I remember every single word from conversations and I have a whole box of unsent letters to myself and every person I've ever met.
When I was 18 I moved all on my own from my home in Sweden to London to create the life I wanted to live and find the person I wanted to be. After a year in solitude with my mind and my music, I packed light and spent a year homeless on the road, dedicating my life to my art and music, determined to tell the world about it. I went everywhere and nowhere. Spent nights on the concrete, had beautiful conversations with strangers and walked foreign streets every day. I learned how to build my home in my music and my art. When I sing or write, I'm not scared anymore. I just want to mean something to someone because every person I meet mean the world to me and I just wish to belong. I just wish to be me and be loved for that. I still don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way, and I'm giving my life to this journey. I wanted to turn my life into art, my very existence into a poem. It might not always be easy, but it will always be beautiful.
“I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem.Watch me burn.Love always, Charlotte”
“You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.”
“I want to burn with excitement or anger and bleed, bleed out my words. I want to get all fucked up and write raw and ugly about all these things I see and am and could be.”
“I didn't do music to live; I lived so that I could do music.”
“I believe in knowing who you are but without limiting yourself to your own expectation of who you are.”
“Maybe I can learn to live in a way that makes it worth writing about, and maybe I can actually become something more than this empty shell.”
“All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality.”
“All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day.”
“My wish has always been to write my own story, to create a life that’s worth writing about. But is a story worth anything at all if I have no one to tell it to?”
“I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I’ve been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose.”
“I have lost and loved and won and cried myself to the person I am today.”
“I could write about how I feel when I sing, write and create something from heartbreak, sorrow, sadness or just simply nothingness. How nothingness can become the most beautiful, unexplainable feeling that makes you forget about gravity for an hour.”
“It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life “I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder.”