The Lake House

5- The picture frame

Christina's POV:

"Holly cow, is this you?", Matthew exclaimed with an amused smile while grabbing a picture frame from the livingroom's shelving.

"Let me see", I asked from the couch nearby where I sat to admire a now calm and steady rain.

There where no thunders or lightnings anymore, but it seemed as the rain wouldn't come to a halt just yet.

There was still a long way to go.

"Yes", I nodded. "That's me when I was around twelve or something".

"Well you were a cutie", he winked while chuckling, amused at my red cheeks.

"Meaning I'm not anymore?", I retorted with a smirk.

"No, you're gorgeous now", Matthew said without flinching his eyes.

Rolling mine with a shy grin, I spoke with a low voice. "Whatever you say", before walking towards the couch, one more time, adjusting my bum and relaxing into the cushions.

Eyeing me with an intrigued look on his face, he smiled mischievously before turning back around.

"And this picture...", he began while pointing at another one. "You look like a godess here", he nodded while looking at my intensively.

Not knowing how to answer to that, I simply shrugged and turned back around, grabbing a book from the coffee table and diverting my attention to it completely.

"So... don't take compliments too well do you?", he asked with an amused grin.

"Is that what you're doing?", I accused. "Trying to make me feel uncomfortable?".

Changing his demeanor completely, he dropped the grin and gave me a serious look. "Why won't you believe me when I compliment you?", he wondered out loud.

Opening my mouth to give him an answer and shut his annoying ass, I found myself realizing I didn't quite know why.

"I guess I just don't believe they're true", I said while shaking my head.

"Do you not like yourself?", he slowly commented as to test the waters before diving in.

Although he practically jumped out of a cliff with that one.

"It just makes me uncomfortable to receive compliments, okay?", I defended. "I don't know how to take them in".

Truth is, I've always felt uncomfortable when someone complimented me,  whether it was my looks or my personality.

I sort of feel like a vending machine trying to take a wrinkly dollar, you know? I never know how to process it and the person giving it away tends to get frustrated and leave.

"You know what I think?", Matthew said as he plopped himself on the other side of the couch right in front of me.

Even though I made a gesture with my head as if I wanted to hear more, he paused for a second and thought his words through.

"You know when you stare at an object for too long and you start wondering all this things about it?", he asked with a frown.

"Why is this called a couch? Why can it be called something else? Why do I have to seat on it? Why can it have another shape?...", he wondered off.

Realizing I was confused as to what he was trying to make out of his words, he decided to continue.

"It's like the more you look at it, the more you think something's odd about it, right? Like something could be changed", he said while resting his back against the arm of the couch.

"I think that's the same people do with their bodies", Matthew nodded sadly. "And even with their personalities", he added. "It's like for some reason, something's wrong".

Opening my mouth and closing it again, I looked at the guy in front of me as if he had just described my entire train of thoughts.

"Ovethinking everything has always been my downfall", I sadly confessed.

"You know what?", he began excitedly. "I strongly disagree".

Taking his shoes off and resting his feet on the couch, he decided to seem mysterious by making a long pause before continuing.

With a wide smile, he rested his head on the couchion and spoke.

"I once read that those who overthink are also those who overlove", he explained.

An immense smile made it's way towards my every muscle, relaxing my face in ways I don't remember feeling in a long time.

"You know, I dont know how you do it", I began with a light chuckle. "Or even why... but you seem to get a smile out of me with the way you see things in life", I said giving him a thankful smile.

"I just think sometimes we need a little help thinking things through", Matthew explained with a velvety voice.

"I think I need help with more that thinking", I joked with a scoff and a smile.

Looking at me deep in the eyes, he allowed the rain to ambience the room before leaving me speechless one more time.

"And I think you just need to remember most of the pain your dealing with are really just thoughts", he voiced out. "Have you ever considered that?".

It was a rhetorical question, one that had my eyes almost at the verge of tearing up.
Not because he shouldn't have said that, but because it's exactly what I needed to hear.

"It's just been so long since I've been me", I finally let out in a whisper while the tears started to investigate the skin on my cheecks.

As if allowing me to let it all out, he stayed quite and gave me a look of pure understanding.

Shaking my head, I decided to do just that.
Let it out.

"I just want wake up and not feel like I already want to go back to sleep", I said, melancholy lacing my every word.

"I want to go downstairs, laugh about something with my family, drive my little brother to school while we chat out hearts out".

My heart began to hurt, and I constantly kept inhaling as I began to cry heavier.

"I want to go to work", I continued with a pained expression. "Be able to ask the person I like out and and have a wonderful time together".

"I want to fall asleep when i'm tired and not after hours of crying and thinking about things that make me sad", my voice cracked as I said that.

"I want all my smiles to be genuine", I cried out. "I want them to mean something".

"I want to stop doubting my every move, to let go of things when they're not doing me any good instead of holding on to them like an idiot", I practically shouted.

"I want to laugh at my mistakes instead of beating myself up for them", I began sobbing.

"I just- I, I want to-", I broke at the end.

My mind was going a thousand miles per hour, my crying already giving me a headache I knew too well.

It was after a closed my eyes and let myself calm down that I was able to finish letting it all out.

"I just want to feel like myself again".

The soft whisper of my words contained an immense amount of pain and anguish.

The mixture of my mournful voice with the rain drops hitting the cabin from every direction, created a movie-like atmosphere.

As my heart violently trashed around my chest, my breathing struggled to calm itself down.

With my hands inevitably pressed into fists, I looked up to see a tearing Matthew, only he wasn't looking at me with sympathy.

He was simply smiling.

"What's stopping you?", he said.