The qualifying exam...  Pros:  If I pass I'm worry free for a while and it's only a little over two weeks away so it will be over soon.  Cons:  I basically have to relearn everything I've ever known about chemical engineering in the next two and a half weeks.  Here I go:

Mass and Energy Balance - Complete - 13 hours
Principles of Chemical Engineering
Thermodynamics
Chemical Reaction Engineering and Technology
Process Control
Process Design
"Transport Phenomena" by Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot
Applied Mathematics
Chemical Kinetics and Catalysis
Microchemical Systems
Heat and Mass Transfer
Semiconductor Materials Processing

I've been quiet lately.  I've been waiting and wondering how things would change after I took my last pill.  In the past whenever I've felt depressed I've always said, "After [insert stressful situation here] is over, I'll feel better.  This sadness is just a product of me worrying," and I've always been wrong.  I've always been left waiting and wondering, waiting and wondering, hoping that control over my emotional state would eventually return to the realm of predictable situations instead of wild flights of reasonless depression and self loathing.  I've been hoping that my joyful obsession with myself and how awesome I am would eventually return, because being extremely narcissistic was always good for my self esteem back in high school.  Being able to say to myself, "It's okay that [insert stressful situation here] happened because you are awesome and you know it," was always such a welcome relief and I've really been missing out on it lately.

I never expected birth control to make any difference.  I always used it as an excuse inside my head, telling myself that those extra hormones were the problem and not my life.  I never really believed it, but it helped me get through rough times by giving me the ability to blame something other than myself for my problems.  I never expected to be truly happy ever again, after nearly four years of trying to figure out how to bring back those wonderful feelings.  I never expected to be right.

It's been two weeks since I've been off the birth control.  It's been a five days since the last day of my period.  I haven't wished for death since Wednesday, even though all my finals were on Thursday and Friday.  Another strange thing is that I've had vivid dreams the last few nights, dreams like I used to have before I got on birth control, dreams that I actually wanted to write down because they could have been made into feature length movies.  Additionally, I was actually EXCITED for sex instead of just having it because I knew I used to be excited about it.  I don't feel destroyed when I look at the scale and it says 120 pounds.  I wouldn't say I feel exactly like I did freshman year of undergrad, but I could see myself getting there in a few more weeks.  And after having soooo many people tell me that I was just depressed from the stress of college EVEN THOUGH I WAS HAPPIER THAN I HAD EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE just before getting on birth control, it feels really good to be given back the faith in my own knowledge of my body and life.  Thinking back on it, OF COURSE it must have been at least partially related to birth control!  All those extra hormones basically making my body think I was pregnant for the past four years?  How could that not affect me emotionally?  Fuck doctors and psychologists that don't fucking listen when you tell them what's wrong.  If I'd known it was as simple as using a condom instead I would have instantly stopped taking the birth control.  INSTANTLY.

Speaking of which, using condoms again makes me feel really silly, but it's also kind of exciting.  It brings back memories of our first experiences together when we were first dating.  It's a wonderful feeling, even if I do relate condoms to being young and inexperienced.  It brings a strange anticipation into foreplay where we have to control ourselves until the condom is on.  It's really kind of fun actually.  Maybe that's just the old me coming back to the forefront of my personality.  Regardless, good times.

My personality, my thoughts, my feelings, they are all slowly draining away from me.  Perhaps they are more like sand slipping through my fingers as I try desperately not to let any more escape my fragile grip.  Everything seems so muted and lackluster.  The world is slowly losing its color and vibrancy and I'm frightened.  It's been so long since I actually felt like myself and I'm wondering if perhaps the problem is that I'm not myself anymore, but instead have evolved into someone else while I wasn't paying attention.  Nothing really holds my interest, not even keeping this blog up to date.  Practicing the keytar, breakdancing, aikido, all these things were designed to bring be back into the beautiful world I remember, but they just end up being needless burdens that I can feel bad about not having enough time for later.  Am I becoming a shadow of a real person, nothing more than an empty shell with all the physical functionality of a human being but none of the mental creativity that I used to possess?

Every day for three and a half years I've felt this way, with slight dips up and down, but never any real improvement.  I think perhaps the only thing that really kept me from killing myself a long time ago was fear.  I'm afraid of death, but at the same time I think about it a lot.  I imagine how the people that know me would be effected and their pain would be so much greater than my own that I can't bring myself to end my own life.  I don't talk about this with anyone ever other than mentions of it on my blog, probably because I feel so foolish.  How could anyone understand this horrible, creeping feeling deep within my chest when my life is so seemingly perfect?  I tell myself that.  I repeat it over and over. 

"You are loved.   You are healthy.  You have enough money to live. You are intelligent.  You got into graduate school.  You aren't horribly ugly.  Your life is well planned.  You are safe and warm and you should be happy.  You should be happy.  You should be happy.  You should be happy.  You should be happy."

But I'm not happy.  I haven't been happy.  If one could perhaps imagine my satisfaction with life as a large sphere, only a very small portion of the center would be filled up by the caring of others, with the rest of the sphere containing a blend of passive disappointment and loathing of myself.  It's funny, when I was in middle school and everyone thought I was a fat weirdo...I was ironically a lot happier.  I would say only the outer layer of the sphere was corroded by sadness at that point while the inside was made up of my enjoyment for life and egotistically love of my own personality.  Slowly, as time passed and more things that SHOULD have made me happier came into my life, the positive part of the sphere grew smaller and smaller until now, when I'm basically dangling from a tiny thread above a giant pit of utter despair. 

What has happened?  Why do I feel this way?  I mask it daily, smiling and laughing and spending time with others when really all I want to do is sit in a corner all alone and die.  I don't think I've ever said this.  Maybe I'm not as completely honest as I always boast to be, but things are painful to talk about.  When your life is undercut by a constant hatred for yourself, why would you talk about it?  Who would even want to talk about it with you?  I always thought that one experienced identity crisis problems as a teenager, defining one's personality and sense of self, and by the time one got to college all that should be done with and one would be basically a version of their "final" self, if that makes any sense.  Well, not me.  I'm losing myself, little by little, and I don't know how to stop it.  I'm so afraid that eventually there will be nothing left and I'll lose all sense of who I am and who I want to be.

I don't know what to do.  I should be happy.  I should be happy.  I should be happy.