Classy Quote logo
  • Home
  • Categories
  • Authors
  • Topics
  • Who said

Aspen Matis Quotes

Aspen Matis quote from classy quote

Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Beauty Memoir Nature Young Woman

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Beauty In Life Memoir Nature Water

I was passive by nature. I had always been. Arguing felt unnatural and uncomfortable. I was always agreeing even when I didn’t really, instinctively looking for ways to forfeit power, to become more dependent, to be taken care of. I realized how intensely Icecap reminded me of Jacob. They were similar, both diligent and harsh in their judgments—and my big brother’s sureness had always comforted me.But as I ran on sore legs to keep up with Icecap, my tendency toward silence stressed me.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking Memoir Nature Pct

There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking Memoir Self Confidence Self Help Young Girl

The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Action Aspen Matis Bravery Female Power Girl In The Woods Memoir Power Truth

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

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Self Motivation Strength Womanhood

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

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking Mothers And Daughters Self Improvement Truth Wisdom

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

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Empowerment Goals Self Esteem Young Girl Young Woman

I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Empowering Women Goals Memoir Young Woman

I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Self Esteem Truth Young Girl

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

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Admiration Aspen Matis Examples Hiking The Pct Love Self Love

I'd crossed a border—Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I'd been, I was no longer her.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Girl In The Woods Memoir Self Love

I didn’t know if I was brave or reckless.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Brave Bravery Memoir Young Adult Young Woman

You don’t need extra food, extra water, extra clothing for extra warmth – anything extra. You don’t need soap or deodorant. Everything you carry you should need daily.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Food Hiking Memoir Needs

For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen. In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.I finally questioned it.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Girl In The Woods Love Memoir Self Realization Truth Woods

For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard—respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I’d become someone else entirely.I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.I was proud of the strength I’d found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice—I’d used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking Hiking The Pct Memoir Self Realization Young Woman

I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking Hiking The Pct Life Memoir Woods Writer Young Girl

As if violence could make light. Maybe violence could make light.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Girl Memoir Violence

It finally had to.I understood that it wouldn’t be easy, it would be very hard; I’d need to resist the habit I had developed long ago – with conviction. I’d have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I’d stun them. They’d bow to me. I’d let my no echo against the mountains.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir Self Confidence

We aren’t afraid of what we can explain.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Wisdom Young Woman

In the aftermath of destruction, a silence settles – the stillness of fresh loss. People’s cheerful chatter is fainter, the blue color of sky dimmer; now that horror is undeniable and feels inescapable, the value of life seems lessened.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir Woods

My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

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

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Hiking Memoir Young Woman

She’d taken care of me in all the ways my body needed, but the devastation of my rape had made me feel the weight of the essential way she had neglected me: she hadn’t nurtured the potential of my strong and healthy independence.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Mothers And Daughters

Squatting on my bed–after twelve years of trying and missing, in about two minutes total–I put my own contacts in for the first time. Second try on the right eye, first try on the left. I blinked in the contact, my apartment where I now lived alone and my story coming into focus.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I’d been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I’d been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

I didn’t know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir Young Woman

This was a vision of wildness contained – caged. Huge, powerful animals whose wild dignity was stripped from them.Panic jolted me. These animals had had their freedom seized by people who put their own desires first. In the glint of the silver cage bars I saw the same steely repression, the same cold entitlement that allows people to feel it is okay to steal bodies and lives as I glimpsed while frozen beneath Junior. The boy who had put his few minutes of pleasure before my entire life.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Girl In The Woods Memoir

He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn’t looked toward it. I wasn’t lost. I’d always known the way. If I’d only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

I couldn’t yet piece together the disconnected clues to understand the origin of these lights. To explain away strange magic, I’d convinced myself there was an unseen road cutting across the boundless desert floor like a scar. I imagined its different possible courses. The mystery intrigued me. I couldn’t think of the real destination this road would have been built to lead to, but I accepted I couldn’t see, and I accepted it was there, strange but – from where I stood – a beautiful vision.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Woods

My mother overstated the dangers of the world – invented threats. And so I saw: Starbursts’ hoof-made gelatin never gave me mad cow. Mad cow was not a threat to me. And so I thought: most risks weren’t truly real.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Memoir Mothers And Daughters Pct Young Woman

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Love Memoir

The entire time, he’d only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn’t the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn’t have heard me. He’d never responded, not by stopping, not with his words.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This journey had begun with the coercion of my body, with my own wild hope.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Empowerment Memoir

I’d begun at the soundless place where California touches Mexico with five Gatorade bottles full of water and eleven pounds of gear and lots of candy. My backpack was tiny, no bigger than a schoolgirl’s knapsack. Everything I carried was everything I had.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir

From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn’t walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall—feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I’d survived rape—I’d have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change.This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.I wrote it.

~ Aspen Matis

Aspen Matis Aspen Matis Hiking The Pct Memoir
Load More classy quote icon
  • Classy Quote

    ClassyQuote has been providing 500000+ famous quotes from 40000+ popular authors to our worldwide community.

  • Other Pages

    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
  • Our Products

    • Chrome Extention
    • Microsoft Edge Add-on
  • Follow Us

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
Copyright © 2023 ClassyQuote. All rights reserved.