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Charlotte Eriksson

@justaglasschild

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Poet • Songwriter • Myth in motion •
✦ I wrote 5 books, 4 albums & have a podcast. Links below 💭
✦ Amsterdam/Portugal/The Road
The Glass Child

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She wanted so much. She wanted the world, but she could not conquer it so she found a boy she thought was the world and maybe he could invite her into it. Maybe he could be her world.
It turns out you can’t make the world out of a human and you can’t move in and you can’t expect him to make you his whole world—but how would you know that when you’ve never tried before? How can you know when there is no course in how to love or how not to lose yourself or how to simply be happy and fine and healed and loved all at once?

This is not a book about love and how to make it last, but isn’t everything about love and how to make it last? I think I could write a book about pets or politics or museums and it would still be about love and how to make it last because isn’t that the whole thing of absolutely everything: love and how to make it last?
I didn’t love my life but now I do. I’m sure I will fall out of love with it again at some point but I’m confident I will go to therapy and work it out and fall back in love with it.
I didn’t love my body and my mind and my ways of being but now I do. Okay, not every day but 5 out of 7, for sure. I’m lying but I know I can get there if I keep working on it.
I didn’t love people because I felt lonely and no one made me unlonely and I blamed them. But now I realise the loneliness is an inside job. I can love them or not love them independent of their love for me, but the loneliness is dependent on not loving very many things. So now I try to love a lot.

That’s a truth, you know, you should write that down: loneliness is dependent on not loving very many things or people so you should try to love as many things and people as you possibly can. Loneliness can’t survive when there is too much love around.

Did you write that down? by @justaglasschild

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5 years ago

* . · ✦ MUSIC VIDEO: ‘feeling everything, holding on to nothing’ OUT NOW!
Filmed on the streets of Barcelona.
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“You want to hold on and move on at the same time, and that's why it hurts.”
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Link in bio ☽ by @justaglasschild

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7 years ago

I’m turning 31 today. I love getting older. It’s a sort of letting go while rooting down. You won’t get it until you get it, but it’s wonderful. I do not want to go back.
I no longer open up everywhere. I just got sick of it, you know? Too many people opening up about too many things & it makes everything lose value. We have an inflation going on & it’s not just hitting the economy. We’re all doing too much of what everyone else is already doing & I’m just bored out of my mind of always knowing exactly what’s going to happen next, you know? The mystery is gone.

You know the mysterious fascination you feel for someone you’re attracted to? Every move something new to analyse. What drives them? What could life be like next to them? Does he raise his voice when he gets angry? What side of my bed will he sleep on?

Mystery.

I started to feel like an old relationship that ran out of mystery. No more dressing up for nights out. No more roses in the morning or walking home at 4am talking about the state of our world. I felt like dishes in the sink & the same old furniture from IKEA.

I got sick of being consistent & predictable so I took a right but did not tell about it. I moved to places without telling about it. I started projects, I fell in love & walked away, studied art history & failed every course but loved every second of it & I did not tell you. I sang at a funeral, broke some bones, saw a girl fall from the 2nd floor but survived,
& I did not tell you.

I spent a year feeling like I had a love affair with the world, & no one knew. Which made it mysterious & dark & delicious. No one knew where to find me; I set myself free.

I feel like the world is mine again. I feel like the world and I are dating again. I feel a dark attraction to this universe, like it's observing my every move with fascination. Or maybe I feel like you & I are dating again. You, reading this. You don’t know everything about me anymore & I’m loving it. I’ll reveal myself, maybe, eventually, but it’ll take time. I have secrets, you want to hear them? Are you in a hurry? To where? To what? Here, take a seat, fill your glass, I’ll take you everywhere but we're going slow this time. taken in Portugal by @justaglasschild

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5 years ago

Everything changed when I forgave myself for all the things I couldn’t be.
I’m not famous, successful, or wealthy. I’m nothing special. I don’t have a massive group of friends who check in when I go quiet. I don’t have a big house with floor so ceiling windows or academic qualifications to get me a shiny job: heck I never even had a job!

But I get to do me. Full out. Peacefully. With no one telling me to go there or do that, be this or sign here. I get to explore every corner of my own personality, on my own terms. Every passion, every talent, and follow wherever it might lead me.

I’m not everything I want to be, but I’m more than I was, and I’m still learning.

I’m happy, just sitting here. Knowing I have a few friends. Knowing I have a dream to work on. Knowing I have somewhere to go if it starts raining. A pillow to rest my head on. Someone to call when I get lonely. Forests to explore, lakes to sit by, crisp air in October, and endless oceans left to sail. This is enough. This is more than enough.
And most of all, I am enough.

Everything changed when I forgave myself.

#charlotteeriksson #bookquotes #selflove❤️ by @justaglasschild

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4 days ago

Autumn tribute 🍂☕️ May your sweaters be cosy 🕯️🩰

Fav Aug/Sep things (so far):
1. New moth species identified this month. Currently my fav thing to talk about.
2. Storage unit smells finally faded from my clothes.
3. People explaining how to live at 3am dinner parties. I say “wow” 5 times and then “tell me more”.
4. Reading books about places you’re about to travel to (I’m spending the winter in Athens!)
5. Our fav warped tour bands are making music again (!)
6. Favorite book this month: the one I didn’t finish writing. My most accessible work yet. taken in Amsterdam, Netherlands by @justaglasschild

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19 days ago

i drink coffee and pay my bills, then i drink some over-priced drink in a noisy bar, and i spend time with people but never feel like i know them and suddenly i tell the world i’m writing a book and i haven’t written in months. i fall in love with someone who does not fall in love with me and then i work on myself a little more until i throw my fist in the air stating “i’m complete on my own!” and then i drink a little more and write a little more and sleep a little less and then i fall in love with someone who does not fall in love with me, or the other way around, and we go drinking over-priced drinks in noisy places and i hold his hand a little tighter and try not to say i love him. then i get a little lost and only write texts around 3am and then i wake up next to someone but wish i was alone. then I wake up alone but wish I was next to someone. so i go drinking and find someone to fall in love with and hold his hand a little tighter and then i say “i’m gonna write a book!” and he finds that exciting and calls me patti smith and says i drink a bit too much and then he goes to work and then he saves a lot of money and then he wants to go on holiday and i say “babe, writers don’t go on holiday” and he smiles but doesn’t find it funny and then i put that in a book and he never mentions it but at least i’m a writer and he likes that.

// from my book “He loved me some days. I’m sure he did.” ☽
www.charlotteeriksson.com ✦ Link in bio! by @justaglasschild

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a month ago

The apartment is clean now. This is the part I thought I wanted. The keys are mine. The boxes are unpacked. The olive tree is in the corner where I imagined it would be. My bedroom window does not close properly so at night I hear the street as if it were inside the room.

For a while I thought the thing standing in between me and Life was getting here, to where I’m at today.
I thought there would be a before and an after, and that after would be like finally seeing the world in HD. I thought I would wake up and life would be active, busy, overwhelmingly real. This is my city. This is my apartment. These are my things. I did it. Now life has started.

But then I got here and the furniture arrived and I started putting things in place and I joined a running club and I found myself a few friends and I still go to sleep every night wondering when things will start. There is nothing else coming but I’m still waiting for the move-in. Am I destined to always be reaching and never inhabiting? There was such pleasure in daydreaming about the next thing. The next city. The next apartment. The next version of myself. I could become almost anything if becoming was the task. I am very good at this, dreaming up new ways to be me and go through life and I am very good at building and developing and taking action, but I am not good at being. Just being.

“I am a problem-solver!” I proclaimed early on. If there was a problem, there was movement and tasks and therefore, hope. Now there is less to solve. This should feel like freedom, no? This is what they advertise as “peace”? Well, it feels more like standing in the middle of a room after everyone has left.

I am too old to keep believing that life will start when I move, when I earn more, when I become more interesting, when I meet the right people, when the apartment is finished, when the business is stable, when I finally become the person I have been describing for so long. This was supposed to be it? I created so many grand goals and magnificent identities but never asked myself what I want to do on a quiet Tuesday at four in the afternoon. by @justaglasschild

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2 months ago

You were standing in the kitchen at 2am
and the light was doing that thing
to your body
that always reminds me of something that hasn’t happened yet.
I thought, you’re so beautiful ,
I thought, I should say something,
I thought, the eggs are burning.

I have loved people the way you love a city
you’re about to leave.
I remember your hands,
the rest is just weather and
I have been in seven cities since you.

Some nights I sit in bars where nobody knows me
and I feel so free I can’t breathe.
You asked if I was happy
and I described the curtains in a room in another country.
I keep dreaming about the stairwell.
Your coat on the railing.
The sound before you said the thing
not the thing
just the sound before it.

I am not good at ordinary love.
I have tried.
I have shown up with groceries
and good intentions
but I don’t know what to do
with a body that wants
this much.

There is a version of this
where I let you go clean.
Where I don’t drive past your street
or look for you outside the Italian bar
or down the road
but I am still the woman
who stands in kitchens at 2am
watching things burn
because the light is so good
and I am always
always
about to say something.
— Charlotte x

#charlotteeriksson by @justaglasschild

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2 months ago

My relationship with my hometown feels like nostalgic grief for a life I chose not to live. I left as a teenager, cursed the memories & the selves I’d been. & now, almost 2 decades later, I always return feeling nostalgic for the life that didn’t happen here. I walk the roads & see nothing but all the friendships I threw away, the moments I didn’t appreciate enough, daydreams about the world out there, assuming that real life was an event happening somewhere else. If I just packed my rucksack & moved fast enough my experiences would finally feel big & important. I became so obsessed with the future… it completely consumed me.

But then I crossed borders only to discover that the future just moves further down the road & never really starts. Or feels right. Or definite. And never quite as big and important as I envisioned it.

So now, 17 years later, I walk the floors of the house I grew up in & of course realize that life was never happening “elsewhere.” A perfectly valid life was unfolding right here while I was busy looking for an exit.

I spent my 20s trying to solve the problem of where to live, as if the right address would grant me peace of mind. But the question, of course, is not where life or home is located. The question is: if this is life, how do I occupy it? How do I drop my bags, settle into the room I am actually standing in, & learn to inhabit the present moment completely?

Feeling alive is not a geographical question after all, but rather a consequence of paying absolute attention.

So how do I treat my current reality as the final destination instead of a preparation for what’s to come?

The work now must be entirely internal. The hometown I left has moved on. The versions of me that never happened there are gone. So we must let them go. My only task now must be to stop running from the space I currently occupy. Learn to live inside it, completely. Choose the city I am currently in, the room I am sitting in, the page I am reading, and inhabit this life entirely. Put my bags down heavily.
Settle into where I am and learn to pay absolute attention. taken in Sweden by @justaglasschild

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3 months ago

I want to want the wrong thing at the wrong time
in front of people I’m trying to impress.
I want a Tuesday that ruins me
and impulsive choices that throw me sideways into lives I never planned.
I want to argue about something unimportant
outside the corner shop at 4am in Berlin
and I have no reason to be there.
I want you to say something and then take it back
because you just changed your mind and I love you so madly for that.
🤍 #charlotteeriksson
www.charlotteeriksson.com by @justaglasschild

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3 months ago

I have hope
in who I am becoming.

I have belief in every scar and disgraceful word
I have ever spoken
or been told
because they are still teaching me.
I have hope in who I am becoming.

They say it takes 756 days to run to someone you love
and they also say that the only romance worth fighting for
is the one with yourself,
and I know by now
that they say a lot of things,
people talking everywhere
all the time
without saying a word.
But if it took me all those years to learn myself,
or teach myself
how to look into the mirror
without breaking it,
I know for a fact that it was a fight worth fighting.

I stood up for my own head and so did my heart
and we are coming to terms with ourselves.
Shaking hands  saying, “Let’s make this work,”
for we have places to go
and people to see,
and we will need each other.
So I have hope
in who I am becoming.

It’s July
and I have hope in who I am becoming.

// from my book “Everything Changed When I Forgave Myself” 🌱 Link in bio!
#charlotteeriksson #july by @justaglasschild

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3 months ago

You didn’t lose your youth. You spent it. #charlotteeriksson by @justaglasschild

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4 months ago