I'd always wondered what it was to faint. I'd never before fainted in my life so waking up to "oh gosh, she's alright," didn't exactly make me feel any better. I was laid down on the same hard couch with my head propped against a silk cushion and my legs raised up on the arm of the couch.

"How long was I out?" I immediately asked. A hand rested on my shoulder and another was pressed to my forehead.

"A minute or two." The gentle voice of Dr Winslow. "Kayla, you should've told us that were feeling unwell."

"Too late now," I muttered, sitting up too soon and seeing stars. I waited for the dizzy sensation to pass then stood up staggeringly on weak limbs. Before I could move anywhere, though, hands pulled me back down.

"Kayla, I think you should rest before you go anywhere," said my mother firmly, causing me to sit back in surprise. I hadn't expected her tone to be so harsh when I had literally just fainted.

"Now, can you remember anything before you blanked out?" Jordan's mom asked, handing me what I expected to be a glass of water.

I nodded and gulped down the water, suddenly realising how dehydrated I was. "And to answer your earlier question, Dr Winslow, yes. My friends have been supportive to me and I appreciate it."

She said nothing in response instead took the empty glass from my cold hands and placed it on her desk. I shoved my hands into my pockets in an attempt to warm them. "Kayla, are you aware that prescription drugs may cause harmful side effects?"

I resisted the urge to bite my lip like I always do when I lie. "I'm not sure where this is coming from, Dr."

"You can't possibly be suggesting that my daughter-"

"No, Mrs Hayes," Dr Winslow interrupted my mom. "I was not insinuating anything in particular."

The questions finally ended after that and soon my mom and I left the therapist's office after being told that I must rest, keep myself hydrated and eat more.

"I love how she just tells us what to do. She's a therapist not a doctor," I complained as we got into the car which had yet to warm up.

"She studied medicine before she could become a psychiatrist, Kayla."

"You took me to a psychiatrist? You really must think I'm mad," I groaned. "Still, it's not her job." I strapped my seatbelt on and turned up the heat, instantly appreciating the warmth that spewed forth.

"Well, parenting isn't my job but I do it anyway," my mom replied matter-of-factly. I shut up at that.

"Kayla, your mother and I are concerned about you."

The words that came out of my dad's mouth meant I was in trouble. I didn't know why but I had an idea. I decided to go along with whatever it was they thought needed discussing.

"Okay, and?" I raised my eyebrows from where I was sitting at the kitchen table. My parents were probably both seated across from me with frowns on their faces. But I ignored that fact since I couldn't see them anyway.

I heard my dad sigh then my mom give him a reassuring word or two. "We're concerned for your health. Physical and emotional." I gestured for him to continue and leaned back in my chair to cross my one leg over the other. "You seem distant...we're not sure what it is, but, we want you to know that you don't have to hide away from everyone."

"I don't hide."

"Would you prefer the term conceal? Your mother told me that Dr Winslow mentioned prescription drugs. Is there something you're not telling us, Kayla?"

Of course there is, I thought but kept silent. I sniffed and pursed my lips in response. My mother spoke up. "Have you been feeling unwell for quite some time, Kayla?"

The situation was beginning to feel familiar, as if I was back at the hospital again. Question after question. Kayla this, Kayla that. It seemed as endless as it was pointless.

"No. I feel perfectly fine."

"We're trying to help you. You can tell us the truth." My dad again. My parents sounded desperate and I didn't blame them but I didn't feel particularly sorry for them either. I needed space. Why couldn't they understand that?

"I am telling the truth, okay? I'm fine. Finis. Klaar." Then I got up and made my way towards the back of the house where my bedroom lay in wait.

The rain had begun again as I slipped beneath the covers of my bed and finally rested my weary head on my pillow. I listened to the downpour and began wondering where I would be if Camryn had never gone. Who I'd be. I was no longer the Kayla I used to be, I knew that. But suddenly that realisation dawned upon me. I could never go back and redo these last five months. I couldn't change the way I had changed. Not ever.

So much had changed without me noticing. Yesterday, I didn't take a second glance at the person I'd become but now I wondered why I hadn't. Surely I could be different? Surely I wouldn't let Camryn's death rule me? Or was I ruling myself? I'd become numb to pain. Emotional pain. In a way, I'd stopped caring.

But now, sitting on my bed with the rain pelting loudly above me and the stark cold surrounding me, I found myself awake for the first time in months. It was all suddenly staring at me cold in the face. I was alive and breathing and moving without even thinking. Did it even matter anymore? Did anything really matter anymore?

As if I mattered. As if the universe cared what happened to me. It didn't. But it's a characteristic of humans to hope that there is something larger, something more important out there in control. That no matter what happens today, we still have tomorrow. Camryn didn't believe in tomorrow. She believed that she got all the good she would ever get and that was that. That was what? Pain and suffering? Is a tiny speck of dust in the vast expanse of infinite universe all we are? Are we so small that no one cares whether we're happy or dying?

I supposed we were just like the sub-atomic particles of an atom. We were either positive or negative and if we tried to be the other, we'd explode. And I could watch myself explode and destroy everything around me. Or I could stay still and suffer as the Earth plunges me into the depths of disorder where all I have is myself and my negative charge, wondering if it will ever get better. I can do nothing and watch myself die slowly and painfully just by being what I was born to be. More painful than an explosion, but at least I'd be protecting everyone else instead of obliterating them in my wake.

I lay back on the cold sheets and ignored the shivering that raked through my body at an alarming pace. But I couldn't relax. All of a sudden, as if it had never occurred to me in the seventeen years of my life that I'd lived, I realised that I would either explode or rot in the dark alone. There wasn't any other option. The thought frightened me and sparked a restlessness that I'd never encountered.

I assumed that Camryn's suicide was her explosion. She had destroyed everything and everyone who ever came into contact with her. She had destroyed me. I grew breathless from the hurricane that was my mind. I sat up and pressed my forefingers to my temple in an attempt to calm myself but no consolation came. My fingers began to itch and I knew what was coming next.

In the darkness that was now my world, I battled an internal war. The choice to let go and open up myself to the monster that I was becoming. Or I could close up again and welcome the numbness that I knew would protect me from myself. Never before had I wished that Camryn had taken me with her. I didn't mind if I'd gone to hell, because I was sure it would've been better than what I was fighting right now.

I fumbled for the small wooden table beside my bed and with desperate fingers, clutched onto my remedy. It didn't seem right that such a small object could have such a large impact. I poured out the pills and swallowed them with the water I kept beside my bed. But a sudden need for more produced a movement of my hand to the painkillers and I enclosed my stiff fingers around them, gripping tightly until they were safely down my throat. But I needed more. I wouldn't survive. Who knew if I would? Who knew if I would be able to handle my emotions on my own? It was only right that I took another few. Then another.

The more the better. My grandma used to say that. But I could no longer remember to what she had been referring and I no longer had the energy to recall the memory. My mind was overcome with what felt like a storm. It was raging inside the walls I'd built, threatening to crumble them into pieces of brick and dust. It was a new sensation of panic and anger and fear and desire combined. I thought of everything and nothing all at once. I was bombarded with voices and sounds and images that made me dizzy.

After what felt like a lifetime that I hadn't wanted to experience, my mind seemed to give up all together. The storm died down, the panic and anger resolved to just fear. I was unaware of my surroundings but my lungs were heaving and my head was aching as well as my limbs shaking. Confusion overwhelmed me but I felt paralysed to the cold of my bed.

Then, just as quickly as a blinding light pierced my vision, it all faded to black again and I lost consciousness for the second time that day.