This post, with its eight parts, serves as a reminder of how resilience and perseverance can help you navigate a difficult situation.
These sentences are from The Outrun: A Memoir by Amy Liptrot and its movie adaptation.
📌To better understand these sentences, I recommend that you write your own reflection on them.
1: My Personal Geology
“In grandiose moments, high on fresh air and freedom on the hill, I study my personal geology.
My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart. Lightning strikes every time I sneeze, …
What do you mean by “my personal geology”?
This metaphor compares the layers of a person’s identity, emotions, and experiences to the layers of the earth that geologists study. Just as geologists examine rocks to understand the earth’s history, the person reflects on their life, uncovering layers of their past, their growth, and the forces that have shaped who they are.
2: The void
“I’m filling the void with new knowledge and moments of beauty. The dangerous thoughts will happen – and while I’m experiencing them I feel like that’s the way I will feel for ever – but I just have to let the cravings pass lightly.”
“My life was rough and windy and tangled. Growing up in the wind leaves you strong, sloped and adept at seeking shelter.”
I try to do the same too, filling my void with reading and writing as much as I can. This sentence suggests a conscious effort to heal and grow by seeking meaningful experiences and learning.
By let your cravings pass lightly, you show you know: “emotions and thoughts are temporary, even if they feel eternal in the moment.”
3: Bruised Confidence
“I want to make connections and to communicate because we are only and really alive right now. I still want to experience the extremes so I must find ways to fulfil this need sober. I must be brave. I wonder if I can still be cheeky or flirtatious without booze. If I master this, I could be unstoppable. In the past months I’ve been stifled by bruised confidence and anxiety, but these things take time. I’m gradually learning to say things sober that other people wait to say drunk.”
This line conveys a deep struggle with self-doubt and the paralyzing effects of anxiety. It’s a poignant and relatable sentiment, highlighting the inner battle between the desire to grow and the weight of emotional pain.
4: RAIN AND FIRE
“Rain on me. Strike me with fire. I feel like lightning in slow motion. I am one fathom deep and contain the unknown. I am vibrating at a frequency invisible to man and I’m ready to be brave.”
This phrase: “Rain on me. Strike me with fire” can be a good mantra.
It symbolizes a yearning for renewal and transformation. Rain is often associated with cleansing and rebirth, while fire represents intensity, passion, or even destruction that clears the way for something new. RAIN AND FIRE together convey a desire to experience profound change—both destructive and healing forces at work.
5: Too many opened Tabs
“I have twenty tabs open, each an endless journey, an unfinished thought. I can’t go to sleep yet: there are too many tabs open in my brain.”
“It takes a few seconds for the car’s engine to stop running and quieten, then for my personal velocity to come to a halt, heartbeat to slow, clothes to stop rustling, for the noise in my head to fall away and the sounds of the night to reveal themselves.”
The stream of your Consciousness can steamroll you, with not letting you focus on one single thing.
7: The Impulse
“I am finding new priorities and pleasures for my free time. I’ve known this was possible but it takes a while for emotions to catch up with intellect.”
“When I am experiencing the impulse to drink, I try to examine it further, that false promise. I am experiencing discomfort and want something to provide flow and easiness. I want something to take the edge off. But I’m realizing that times of anxiety are necessary and unavoidable, and, in any case, I like the edge: it’s where I get my best ideas. The edge is where I’m from. It’s my home.”
“By ‘edge’ I mean my cool, by which I mean my enlivening sense of discontent, and my youth, and sex – narrowed eyes and full lips – and enjoyment of testing the boundaries, of saying something uncomfortable and an excitement in the unexpected.”
“It takes a while for emotions to catch up with intellect.” I have felt this sentence in my own way. This sentence points out the gap that often exists between understanding something logically and fully processing it emotionally.
8: Are you ready to plunge?
“I am free-falling but grabbing these things as I plunge. Maybe this is what happens. I’ve given up drugs, don’t believe in God and love has gone wrong, so now I find my happiness and flight in the world around me.”
The act of “grabbing” implies a determination to find purpose or anchors, even in the midst of uncertainty.
It suggests resilience and a refusal to completely succumb to the chaos. It’s a striking metaphor. Isn’t it?
