I turn and stare out of my bedroom, the sun is beginning to go down and the moon has appeared.

I wonder what Dan's parents are doing now; how they're coping. I wonder who found him; hanging from a rope in his bedroom. Dead. I wonder what his brother did when he found out that his brother had killed himself. I wonder how his parents feel, knowing that their son killed himself and they had no idea he was suicidal. And that they could have helped. Knowing that they won't ever see him go to university, get a job, get married, have kids. Knowing that he's dead, he's gone, and he's never coming back.

It's been over a week, 8 days to be precise, since I found out that Dan had committed suicide, and the weird thing is; I don't feel any sort of emotion now. I don't feel sad or angry or regretful anymore. I don't feel anything. I should be crying, I should be screaming with pain and regret like I did when I first found out. The voice in my head has stopped and I feel more solitary than ever before. I feel like I'm drowning, while I can see everyone else swimming. I feel empty.

I wonder how other people feel about Dan. Are they ridden with guilt and sadness like I was? Or do they feel empty, like how I feel now? Or are they even bothered? Are they just simply getting on with their life, ignoring the fact that someone had killed themself? I want to know but on the other hand, I really don't want to know because I'm afraid of what else I might discover.

I wonder if there will be a funeral for Dan. Do you have funerals for people who've committed suicide? If there is, I wonder who will come. I wonder how many people will pretend that they cared about Dan. I wonder how many people will cry. I wonder how many people will realise that they too could have helped him.

I wonder what the Howell household is like now. How they'll have to sit around a dinner table with one seat spare, how they'll watch TV as a family with one seat of the sofa unoccupied. How his mother and father will only have to say goodnight to two people, not three. How his mother will only have to wake one person up in the morning, not two. How she'll have to cook for three people, not four. How different the house will be without him. How his bedroom will never be occupied, how his bed will never be slept in again, how the curtains will never be drawn again. No more clothes on the floor, no more homework lying around. How the door will probably be rarely opened, if at all.

I think about my own life. My parents haven't realised that I haven't gone to school for the past 7 days. They haven't noticed that I haven't been going out at all; they haven't noticed that I barely leave my room. They haven't noticed anything. Is this how Dan felt? As if no one cared enough to realise what was going on?

I think about how if you repeat something over and over again, then it loses its meaning. Our lives are the same way, you watch the sunset too often and it just becomes 6pm. You make the same mistake over and over again and you stop calling it a mistake. If you just wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, one day you'll forget why.

I decide to turn my phone on for the first time in a week and I'm greeted with dozens of messages. All from Lucy, Anna and Megan. All asking me why I'm not in and what I'm doing and feeling. I don't reply to any of them. I don't need to. I don't want to. I can't even explain it anyway. I don't even know why I'm feeling this way. I wish I did. I don't even miss them; I don't even want to see them, my three best friends. They won't understand. And they wouldn't be able to understand because you'd have to be that person. And I kind of think, what's the point? If you don't really know someone and they don't really know you, not properly, then why bother trying?

I think about Dan. How bad his life must have been to make him believe that it wasn't going to get better so he should just commit suicide. How he couldn't take it any longer, how he was sick of being in complete and utter solitude. How the sadness and the darkness took over his life.

It scares me how this solitary and this emptiness feeling is addicting; in a way that you can't stop. It's familiar, it's comfortable and it's easy in a sense that comes naturally to you. But everything else about it is hard. How you don't feel like doing anything else other than lying in bed, alone with your thoughts. The way it drags you under and holds you down, like an anchor. Yet it's addicting, because you know it well. And there's sort of a comfort in that, like being home or sleeping in your own bed after being away. There's just a sense of 'this this is where I belong; this is how it's supposed to be'. And that's the scary thing because you don't know if you'll ever resurface.