River Ellis was a whirlwind of an experience when life was monotonously bland, harshly unforgiving and unequivocally foul. He showed me a world that wasn’t gray, nor black or white. We were bright and colorful, purely unadorned and raw, stripped of superficial perceptions of life. He was my childhood friend. My lover. My partner. I loved and worshipped him with entirety, with every pulse. With every bated breath in my body, I was his and he was mine. We burned brighter than the sun, and together, we clashed, fell, and soared. Together, we made the perfect harmony. Then everything changed the moment he decided to chase his dream. While he became riveted in Hollywood’s glittery façade, I found myself alone, whereas he lived his life to the fullest. I became the shadow of his past, dimming in the sunlight that we once orbited and gravitated. Gradually, as time passed, the inevitable happened. Then darkness completely filled my life, cloaking me and embracing me when I became fragile and utterly broken, teaching me the hardest lesson of all. It’s better to have loved with my all and having had the chance to know what it’s like to find something so beautiful than endure a lifetime of never knowing it at all. It made me fathom that such beauty shouldn’t be held on to. You shouldn’t choke it, stifling it until life drained away. Instead, you had to let go, set it free, and let it ride the waves so other people could experience that one of a kind rapturous, profound mystery as I once had. Love was blinding and beautiful, but it also was a casualty. And after the tumultuous breakdown I had, I’m earnestly devoted in avoiding it at all cost. $0.99 on Kindle.