It came out as barely a whisper, and she wondered for a moment if Matt would even be able to pick up what she had said. She was tired as well, but she’d gone down this path once before. After breaking up with Tyler the first time, because of the Sire bond. She had been so done with everything. Her father thought she was a monster, she was never going to fulfill the dreams she’d clung so tightly to for so long. There would be no white picket fence in her future, no marriage, no children and everything had just been too much. And then Tyler had bitten her and she’d been so ready to just give in and die. Let the pain overtake her and finally rest. It’d seemed like such a good idea, the only idea she could grasp onto at the time, before Klaus had waltzed into her bedroom and turned that idea upside down.
Caroline was worried that Matt wasn’t able to see that though. Their lives were hell at that moment, one bad thing after another had happened, and Lawrence was its own brand of chaos, but that didn’t mean that it couldn’t eventually get better. They would eventually move on from all that had happened and build new dreams, live new lives.
She struggled to find the words again, wanting to convey all that she’d been able to take from her own pivotal moment, wanting to help her friend see that everything wasn’t futile. “No, we can’t get her back. We can’t bring back who Elena was, who any of us were, but that doesn’t mean we stop living, you know? There’s so much left for us to do. To see. To learn. Vicki’s here and maybe we don’t know for how long, but you’ll at least get some time with her. And I’m here. Jer’s here. Jenna. And I know it doesn’t seem like it right now because you’re hurting, but that’s something, isn’t it?”
So maybe Lawrence wasn’t exactly ideal, but that didn’t mean they stopped living. “I don’t want to live in a world without you, Matty.”
Without Matt...Caroline truly wondered how well she’d be able to hold onto her humanity in Lawrence. It was hard enough without her mother and Bonnie around, but to lose him as well would break her.