Camila didn’t respond, instead glan

Camila didn’t respond, instead glancing back out to the sea, lost in her thoughts, admiring the vista, playing with her own hands in her lap.

“Camz please don’t hide from me,” Lauren prompted her, worried she wouldn’t answer.

“I’m not hiding,” Camila said, finally turning her attention back to her girlfriend and reaching for her hand, stroking the back of it with her thumb reassuringly. “I’m just thinking.”

“You do that a lot I’ve noticed,” Lauren told her, nodding her head to the book in Camila’s lap.

“I do nothing but think,” Camila said honestly. “That’s all I do and sometimes it gets a little bit overwhelming.”

Camila paused for a moment to give Lauren a significant look, her girlfriend having been present at a number of her emotional breakdowns.

“Do you know what it’s like to be trapped in your own head?” Camila asked. “To want to be able to express yourself or share something with someone else and not be able to?” she questioned. “It’s frustrating, it is so frustrating.” Camila said through gritted teeth, returning her attention to the sea again.

“So share it with me now,” Lauren encouraged her. “Tell me now.”

Camila looked back at Lauren and continued.

“Your head is the loneliest place you could ever live,” Camila told her simply. “To be stuck there listening to everyone else speak and verbalise their thoughts aloud with ease, to unburden them on someone else, to seek advice and reassurance whilst you are unable to…”

“Or unwilling to?” Lauren questioned hesitantly and Camila gave her a pointed look.

“You’re perceptive.” Camila noted, staring out to the sea again.

“You’re not nearly as good at hiding your emotions and your thoughts as you think you are,” Lauren told her. “People can read you Camz; the people that know you, that really know you can anyway.” She shared. “Your diary helped me understand you better, but, you’re an open book sometimes and I don’t always need your scrawled handwriting to understand what’s locked away in your head.”

“I can’t react,” Camila said after a moment’s pause in answer to Lauren’s original question, her eyes still on the water, avoiding Lauren’s probing ones. “Reaction suggests a response to something; that I’ve dealt with and accepted it but I haven’t. So I can’t react. I can’t do anything, I can only think and write…”

“And speak,” Lauren added as Camila trailed off.

“Sometimes,” Camila agreed, her hand now playing with the sand around her, her fingers manipulating it between them thoughtlessly.

“To react isn’t always to have accepted something though,” Lauren said after a while when Camila had divulged no more. “Sometimes people react to things without thinking, without accepting the situation. Sometimes people just…react Camz.”

“People,” Camila said turning her head, her eyes finding Lauren’s again. “Not me.”

“Why?” Lauren asked.

“You know why,” Camila answered and Lauren was surprised to find that she did.

“You’re scared of yourself.” She responded, lifting an eyebrow in realisation. “Of what you’ll do if you just allow yourself to react and not think.”

“Look what happens when I do,” Camila said sadly. “Looked what happened when I did.” She corrected. “I hit a teacher, I trashed my room, hurt my sister.” She listed off easily. “I pushed Dinah away…I can’t just react, I have to think.”

“So you don’t do either,” Lauren stated in understanding. “You don’t react, you pretend not to hear, not to see how people treat you and others are feeling and you do nothing. You don’t deal with it, you just acknowledge it. Camz,” Lauren said placing a hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder and drawing her attention back to her once more. “You can’t ever move on if you don’t break this cycle somehow. How are you going to ever move past this if you refuse to deal with what happened? To address how you’re feeling, how your mom is feeling, how other people perceive you…”

“Do you know how often I hear that I should just get over it? That I should put the accident behind me and try to move on?” Camila asked. “My therapist tells me I need to leave the past exactly where it is and concentrate on the future, but no one seems to understand that my past has shaped my future in to something that I never envisaged it to be.”

Camila looked at Lauren again, meeting her interested eyes square on.

“How am I supposed to deal with what happened, to accept that this is who I am now when in my head I still see myself as the same person I was before the accident.” Camila finally admitted. “She’s still in there Lauren, the person that I used to be, she’s just trapped in a body that means people can’t see her anymore. Now they just see this,” Camila said gesturing to herself with a hand. “They just see who she’s been forced to be, who she is in the confines of a dysfunctional body.”

Lauren saw the glint of tears in the corner of Camila’s eyes from the way that they reflected the light and felt her own eyes sting in response.

“I see her,” Lauren said simply, placing a hand under Cami