A/N: So… looks like this oneshot turned into a two-shot guys. I know I have a few other stories I should be working on but in all honesty this is all I have the emotional capacity to write at the moment so I hope you enjoy. Just needed to get some things out and embodying Leah is the best way to do that for me.

Disclaimer: If I owned Twilight so much would be different.

Leah POV: And then my eyes fluttered open. I must have been dreaming again. Of course. Why would Sam ever leave his imprint for… me? I rolled onto my side and curled up in fetal position, like I so often did nowadays. It was the only way to clench the enormity of the pain that ebbed through me.

When Sam first left me, people kept telling me with sympathetic eyes and open arms that they knew how I felt, that it would get better. "It's a high school relationship," they all said. I hated that term. High School Relationship. It makes it sound like it means less than the ones people have in college, throughout the rest of their life. Why degrade it? A relationship is a relationship, regardless of what age it begins. You read articles in the paper all the time about an elderly couple where one spouse has passed on and the other dies hours later even though their health was perfectly normal. Who ever said you couldn't die of a broken heart? More often than not, those same elderly couples met when they were around fifteen or sixteen. That was when I met Sam.

It's the closed minded thinking associated with the term "high school relationship" that got me thinking. Nobody knows how this feels. Not really. At least not anyone who was actually at or below a high school maturity level. Most high school kids don't know what it is to fall in love.

To be honest, I didn't think I knew what it was either, not until I lost him. A lot of the time, love is something that stems out of habit, out of being with that person every day and not being used to life without them. Granted, our relationship did last three years. Some may argue that I'm still not used to it. But I am. I know now that no matter how much I wish for it I don't get to wake up beside him. I don't get to steal kisses in between classes at school, I don't get to run into his arms at the end of the day or have the last thing I see at night be a text from him saying that he loves me or that I need my sleep. As much as I try to forget sometimes, as much as I wake up every day and pretend that's what will happen so that I can get myself through the first few minutes of the day, I know that will never happen.

It is hell. The whole pack makes fun of me, they can see inside my head. They know I'm not over him, they know I've grown to resent Emily because of it. And what's worse is, it's not just them. He knows. He knows that every time I look at him there's a mixture of butterflies in my stomach and knives in my heart. He knows better than anyone that the light in my eyes has gone, that I am nothing more than a shell of the girl I once was. I know that it pains him to see this, to know that this is what he has done to me, but it's not like I can do much to help it.

I remember a few months ago, everyone was freaking out over Bella Swan and her reaction to the leeches leaving town. I remember hearing my father say "Good riddance. We don't need those things gallivanting about, and Bella may not see it now but she'll be much better off without them."

A zombie, they had compared her to when Edward Cullen abandoned her. Poor kid. I remembered Bella from my childhood, all our moms had been friends before Charlie and Renee got a divorce. That one was always a bright spirit. She didn't deserve to have her love taken away. My mother had told me then that she was thinking of bringing Bella by to see me, that I could help her cope through losing someone she loved. That was the first time in years I had yelled at my mother. How could she not see? Me, help someone else whose heart had been broken? How could she not know that even though I didn't always act like a zombie outright, that's how I felt inside? Cold and empty. The contents of my heart burnt to a crisp, nonexistent now. I could never help another person; I didn't even know how to help myself.

Being by myself, being where I am right now, is when it hurts the most. I don't even have my girlfriends to talk to. Sure, pack rules and all were not to let others know about the pack, but that came with a bunch of caveats in my case. I was a girl and I hung out with a bunch of guys who were considered to be a cult, with my ex as the ring leader. My friends had all seen it as me either whoring around with his friends or trying desperately to get him to love me again. Neither one was true, but it's not like I could offer them any other excuse.

Even before I had to join the pack, before I knew about he and Emily, they hadn't supported me wanting to fix things with him. "He'll only break you again," they told me. "You're getting pathetic."

As much as I didn't want to admit it, I knew they were right. I mean, how pathetic do you have to be to love someone even when they dismiss you, make it clearly with just their actions rather than their words that they no longer want you? How pathetic must I be to think that if Sam really did come and apologize right now, I would take him back with open arms? How pathetic must I be, if no matter what he does to me, I'll still do anything for him? How much worse can it get?

People describe depression who has no will to get out of bed, no will to join the world. But people often forget that some who are depressed have many qualms about joining the world, but do it anyway to hide their depression. That's what I started doing a couple weeks after Sam disappeared from my life. I got up, got dressed, and behaved as closely to normal as I could get. People were starting to get sick of me, so I began to say that I was over it, that I was fine.

I am not fine, and I never will be again. I had been hurt before Sam, but I could always see myself bouncing back. Not anymore. I am stuck this way. I am stuck being alone. My brother hates me, none of my friends will want to hear this… and Sam couldn't care any less whether or not I was dead or alive. I am alone in this. I am silently screaming, the Leah I once knew fighting to come out and rejoin the world again. But she cannot. The world does not hold a place for that Leah any longer. The world I know now does not hold any trace of light or happiness or… love. As far as this Leah is concerned, love does not exist.

Love is a trick of the mind. Only a trick because, often times, you may feel an intense amount of love, but that person may disappear from your life forever. They don't love you. They never did. They never will. And you will be forced to wonder what it is you did to deserve such a terrible fate.

You will develop your thick skin, you will rebuild all the walls you once had up to protect you from love, but it does not come without cost. Forever, you grieve for the love you once had, and the grief hardens you. You become a bitch. Cold-hearted, self-centered, all the bells and whistles. But with it, you realize that being alone is the only thing that will ever exist. Anyone who "cares" about you leaves sooner or later. All I have is me. A broken, battered me, but me nonetheless.

A/N: This isn't true for all people. Some get lucky enough to have love. Others, well, we end up like Leah. And that is okay. I'm thinking of making this into a oneshot series. Thoughts? I love you all.

Thanks for Reading,

-thewolfgurlgleek :)