Lidia Russkova > Lidia's Quotes

“This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The first time I walked alone, thirteen, I was terrified. A twig snapped under my shoe; my heart revved wildly. I’d walked these sidewalks a thousand times with my mom, yet I was scared by all her fears. Don’t talk to strangers, walk quickly past parked cars, look both ways, all ways, always. Be alert. There was so damn much to remember to stay safe.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“And I thought: What am I doing here? What am I doing here? What am I? I wanted to feel like a pretty girl, even out in Colorado with no one who knew me. To be beautiful. To live beautifully. I drew on maroon Make Me Blush lipstick.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“She wrote something down. She held her eyes firm on the pad. "Marijuana is a hallucinogen," she said softly.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The implication: I had hallucinated a rape.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I realized she was finding Junior innocent of rape. That meant that I was guilty of lying.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Her assessment was that I had poor judgment, and my rape had immediately confirmed it. I believed that the rape had erased all of the progress I’d made in my time hiking and proved my mother right. Immediately. I was hurting with not only the shame of the rape, but also the shame of feeling I’d wanted to prove myself a valid, independent person—but I couldn’t.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“She told me that my rape was not my fault, that I should feel no shame, that – simple as it may sound – I hadn’t caused it. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. No one causes rape but rapists. It was true. And it had not been obvious to me. And hearing it from someone else, a professional, someone who should know, helped me believe that soon I would believe it.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I felt the seed of something strong sprout something real in me and felt a surge. I'd be in the woods, homeless, walking north with my fellow self-exiled desert pilgrims. I'd be a dropout.
I had nothing left to lose.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I felt the urge to sprint, my body felt freer striding faster. I was terribly shaken, though nothing bad had happened. Intellectually it seemed that I should want to stay with Icecap and Edison. We had all smoked, I had decided to make myself vulnerable to new men, to trust them, and these boys had proven themselves to be worthy of my trust. They hadn’t touched me, nothing bad had happened; I had proven my mother wrong. I had weighed the situation, I’d felt safe, and this had been my chance to remind myself that rape wasn’t normal.

It seemed that smoking weed with men had confirmed just exactly that which I hoped it would confirm for me. That men could behave better – that strangers could be safe; that hanging out in new places with new boys isn’t inherently stupid or extreme or risky in nature. That girls do this, especially when they’re also with a boy they know, and such girls are not tempting rape.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“The harsh dimness that follows loss isn’t static, but charged with the energy of immanent change. Hurt, I was left with a choice: wallow and stay in the dark, or seek light and fight to reach it. These two paths emerged. I had this choice to make.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation. I saw that this mountain valley, haunted by senseless murders, darker, had absorbed unthinkable violence and turned it into mesmerizing light. My rape became my catalyst. Rape gave me cause to flee the muteness—forced me into making a bold and forceful change. I chose to fight to find a way to leave to seek my own strength and beauty.

I was searching to find the way to make light.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“A flat drab mountain could produce its own light, no one in this whole world knows why, and if that was possible then of course there must be other things that seemed impossible but weren't, and so anything—great and terrible—felt possible to me now.

I wondered what else there was out in the world that I had never seen through my lenses. I had speculated about the destination of a nonexistent desert road, I'd kept going. What other magic had I wrongly explained away? I felt like I'd lost something I hadn't ever had.

A thousand things I didn't even know existed had to exist.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I knew with certainty now—I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No.”
― Aspen Matis

“Back home, my mother would still impulsively choose my clothes as she'd chosen my name. But all the identities she'd chosen for me felt wrong, now. I could not return to the person she'd picked for me to be. My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“If I couldn't find the trail before dark, I could wake tomorrow disoriented and desperate, without having even made any new miles; my loss of the PCT should have distressed me, but a new instinct led me forward. In this moment of despair I was refusing to stop fighting. I asked the mountains for some guidance, the strength to get myself out of here, and pulled wild power from within myself I'd never known I'd had.

I was no longer following a trail.

I was learning to follow myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Somewhere in the sun-washed space between Southern California’s hills of sand and the present desolate volcanic sprawl I was crossing, my legs had strengthened, but – invisibly – so had my will. The wisdom of my body had cultivated vibrantly since those sadness-drunken months after the rape when I’d felt so numbed by the hurt and shame that I didn’t move further. No longer.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I saw now that bad men existed who would take advantage of any weakness and insecurity they found when violating a victim. I saw it was not my fault; I did not choose to be raped or kidnapped. But now I was learning how to protect myself from the predators, to trust my No and my instinct and my strength. I was learning I was not to blame, I couldn't prevent men from trying to hurt me, but I could definitely fight back. And sometimes fighting back worked.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Walking in solitude fixes nothing, but it leads you to the place where you can identify the malady—see the wound's true form and nature—and then discern the proper medicine.

My malady was submission.

The symptom: my compliance.

The antidote was loud clear boundaries.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad—if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law—it would become my law.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“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 threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains.

And better to feel bad for a moment saying no—and stop it—than to get harmed.

I would take better care.

That small word, no. I'd see its deity.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.

It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“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, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless.

But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing—able—to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me—and to save me—but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Maybe I'd die. Maybe I'd burn to ash in wind, or blacken like the pines. Charred skeletons, I'd add one to the count. I didn't feel scared. I didn't think to panic. The trail wasn't burning. I was raw, ripe for loving. I wasn't stopping.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Mothers are programmed to teach the fit. They are unequipped to listen to pleas, to alter their patterns. Mothers know how to nurse and nurture those who they have hope for—they coo over babies with infections they can help heal, they give advice for things they know, they protect from the dangers they know how to fear. But once their baby becomes so hurt the mother doesn't know how to heal her, she neglects because she doesn't know better. The tricks she knows don't work, she fears, and, eventually, when she is so lost she feels hopeless, she abandons.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir