The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

on days like today, Leni was afraid. It felt to her as if her family stood poised on the edge of a great precipice that could collapse at any second, crumble away like the houses that crashed down Seattle’s unstable, waterlogged hillsides.

he might be moody and sharp-tempered, even a little scary sometimes, but that was just because he felt things like love and loss and disappointment so keenly. Love most of all.

It is a curse to feel everything so strongly and acutely without any way to know how to express things. Trauma has a tendency to blunt our ability to express the feels.

you don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you. He needs me. Us.

Love the sentiment. The skeptic in me wishes people were actually like this.