Kathelin

“I was still hurting, my heart still aching with all of the loss, but I began to attempt to live again.
To wake, to move, to try taking small steps in the right direction. I was alone in that path.”
― R.K. Lilley, Rock Bottom

“He lay on top of me, buried deep, and fell asleep.
He slept all night like that, and I did not move him, did not want to. I gasped breath in and out and closed my eyes and thought that I would never forget this feeling, of him on me and in me, of him consuming my soul and letting me go.
He was too callous, too far gone to realize that I'd never be free of him, and all he'd really done was set me adrift.
I never left that bed.
That feeling of helpless abandonment and unendurable longing stayed inside of me, for hours, for minutes, for weeks.
For years.
I went through my life, through tragedy and pain, through hardship and life, and my heart, my very sould, stayed in that bed.
I felt broken after that last encounter.
Pieces of me had been shattered on that bed, important, essential pieces, and they would not, could not, ever find their way back together.
But I kept going. Life is cruel like that.”
― R.K. Lilley, Rock Bottom

“Tristan's decline was steady and sure after that.

Every tragedy, every harship, seemed to suck him just a little bit deaper into the grip of his own personal hell.
It felt like every slip up, every relapse, was pulling us down, until the weight of all our failures was dragging us under.
At first we were drowning together, but my will to survive was too strong to let that continue forever.
My hold on him became weaker and weaker, and eventually, every finger broken, my hands opened, and I let him go.

No one could say I didn't fight for him. No one could say I didn't lose.”
― R.K. Lilley, Rock Bottom

“I’ll never forget that for as long as I live; the way you were my strength, when I was too weak to even stand.”
― R.K. Lilley, Bad Things