Love Deprived

Chapter 18

Wysteria's P.O.V

Here's the thing about me.
I have many different powers, but the one I find the most useful is my "love meter". That's right, a love meter. It's a big meter in my brain that when close to a person, can measure their love or liking for another person, of my choice of course. It's a very handy tool for my friends, and in a way, I play match maker for people. The only person it doesn't work on? Me. This very useful tool that I possess works on absolutely everyone and everything, except me, and anyone who might have a crush on me. Oh sure it can tell me who my enemies, but it can't tell me if my crush actually likes me or if he's just saying that to make me feel better. Funny how that works.

Take my friend Hayden for instance. She has recently developed a crush on a good friend of mine, Cameron. Hayden and Cameron are both crushing on each other, and its so clear to everyone else, but apparently not to them. So I help Hayden out by reassuring her with my love meter. I don't tell her how I know Cameron likes her, I just tell her to trust me and so far, she has. It's what I always tell my friends, if it's true. Unfortunately I am a very honest person, so I'm not afraid to tell someone when they are being excruciatingly annoying, or something like that. That's also why I am brutally honest when it comes to love, because if I wasn't, then what kind of a friend would be?

Anyway, while I'm helping all of my friends with their love problems, I'm dealing with some of my own. I can't even talk to Kendrick, even though I literally have every chance there could be to talk to him. I swear it's like every time I end up in the same vicinity as him, my brain goes into shut down mode and makes me listen to music just so I don't talk to him and it's driving me insane. And my love meter goes haywire, which sucks because it means I can't read him. So yeah, and that's just one of my problems right now.

Another one is that all of my friends have been coming to me with their problems, and I don't know how to help them. Like seriously every time a friend texts me or asks me for advice I start freaking out on the inside because I'm afraid I can't help them, which would make me feel terrible and then they would still have an unsolved problem. I mean I know it's not my job to help everyone and fix all of their problems, but they're my friends and I can't just leave them in the dust.

And another thing is my premonitions. I've been having more and more of them and they won't stop. The worst part is that most of them (meaning 95% of them) are true and actually happen. (For those who don't know, a premonition us a vision of the future). For example, I had a premonition last week that in my dream the next night, a dark demon was going to try to kill me, and by killing me in the dream, I am killed in real life, just like Bluebell said. Same goes for Kendrick and Griffin. And that's exactly what happened the next night, as I had predicted. Scary right? That's not even the worst of it. I've had some pretty dark premonitions, and I'm afraid that they really will come true, and what scares me the most is that this stuff will happen to the people I love, and some of them have no idea what I am. I can't let that happen. I somehow have to change something. But the thing is, some things aren't revealed until it's too late. That's what happened to my great ancestors who had this power long before I did.

Honestly I feel like I'm going so insane that nothing, and no one could help me. Bluebell and I joke all of the time about how we're too crazy for therapy but that's actually true. If we even tried to tell a therapist what we see, what we feel, what's in our heads, they would probably leave the room because they would be too scared of us. It's why I've never told my own mother what I am, because I know she would tell me it's just my wild imagination and there absolutely no way I could see the future, or that I could have a love meter, or have demons visit me every night, or even that I could telepathically communicate with people.

My other problem is that I used to be a very trusting person. I stopped making that mistake a long time ago. But when I was that person, it was so easy to be hurt, so easy to be betrayed by anyone who decided to take advantage of me in the most twisted ways. They would manipulate me, tell me one thing but show me another. Say one thing to my face, then say another thing to a friend behind my back, which would start the rumors, which would eventually lead me to wanting to end it all. But after I stopped making that mistake, I had one of the hardest exteriors in the school, in the city, possibly the world. It took a lot for someone to even be able to talk to me without me either insulting them or just ignoring them.

But I had people that stuck with me, that saw through the insults, the ignorance and neglect I had, and instead they saw the fragile glass heart that was kept behind the brick walls and the thousands of lasers and traps. If they were able to see through all of that, then I knew there had to be a reason to trust them. So I did. And sometimes I would regret it, as some people were still able to leave scars on my heart, taking pieces of my soul and throwing them on the ground as they stomped across it, making me cry until I had no water to make tears with and just sat there curled in a little ball, feeling nothing.

But there were some people who took the pieces of my heart and my soul, and those people worked together to repair what pieces I still had left. Those pieces make me who I am today, and though they are broken, a little worn and torn, they are still who I am. These people saw my glass heart, my soul made from the most delicate silk, and they held these parts of me carefully, as though if they dropped them, I would drop with them in a pile of broken glass and torn fabric.

These people: Bluebell, Kendrick, Griffin, Kristen, Alissa, Natalia, Hayden, Trina, Cameron. These are the people who made me feel safe when I was in danger. These are the people who have loved me and cared about me when I thought no one did. They reassured me, comforted me. They told me I was beautiful when I felt so ugly. I still feel that way sometimes, but anytime I do, I know these people will be there for me matter what.

Which brings me to another one of my problems. I have the slightest bit of a body image issue. I have been called a twig, a stick, and I've even been called anorexic before, which I assure you I am not. However, I have these moments where I look at myself I. The mirror, and I nitpick at every little thing wrong with me. I start with my face, saying I hate my acne on my nose, the fact that I wear glasses, my ears and how weirdly shaped they are, how I have one crooked tooth that never looks right, how I hate my hair color and the fact that it's a curly frizzy mess, the fact that I have thin lips. Then I go down the rest of my body, how I'm not that filled out, how I can see my rib and hip bones, how my thighs are the slightest bit big, how I have chicken like ankles, and ugly toes. The one thing I maybe like is my eye color. The only reason I like it is because it's a ton of shades of blue and grey mixed with the slightest bit of green. It's the one unique thing I have. The one thing I can't really hate because it's what reflects my heart and soul.

I wish I could stop hating my body, but I'm a teenage girl, I'm gonna have some insecurity. My friends tell me that I am beautiful and that I should love who I am. But does it really matter what they say if I don't think that way? One of my friends brought up a good point a few days ago. I wrote a really depressing poem, and it was nothing like my usual self, but when she read it, she said "maybe this is who you are and what you're feeling deep deep inside. It might not show up in your immediate personality, but I think that deep down this really is how you feel". She was right. I wasn't being honest with myself when I said that wasn't really me. Because the truth was, it was me, I just didn't want to admit it. I didn't want to admit that I was a depressed teenager who was struggling with life and who had trouble just getting out of bed every day. I didn't want to admit that the only reason why I was able to live with myself was because of music, of poetry, of my friends.

I am so tired of hiding this fact, but I feel like if I stop hiding it, then my family and friends are gonna wonder where their loving, kind, and upbeat girl went, when the truth is, she was never there to begin with. She was just a shell of a person with a glass heart and a plastic mask.