Things are... better.

Still not completely fine yet, but on the way to being fine.

I learnt many things yesterday.

• Some things are worth fighting for even though it might seem like they're not at the time.
• Awkward silences are the hardest thing to overcome.
• Sometimes being vulnerable and open about your feelings is the best option.
• Having faith in someone who has hurt you is a big step forward, but is also the first step to recovery.
• Believing in someone who has broken your trust before is a brave thing to do.
• Crying in public is not as embarrassing as it seems when you're wrapped up in your emotions.
• Sunshine can improve your mood for a while.
• Being lied to is hard to get over.
• Silence is hard to break when nobody knows where to begin.
• Staring at the sun is bad for your eyes even if you're wearing sunglasses.
• Sunglasses are the best for when your eyes are red and puffy from crying or when you don't want people to know that you're crying.
• Sometimes wandering around alone is best for when you want to reorganise your thoughts.
• Calling rather than waiting is better when you're unsure. 
• Pinching yourself to stop yourself crying is not a good thing to do.
• Being hugged by the person you thought that stopped caring is the most comforting feeling ever. 

Sometimes when you overthink situations you tend to get carried away by your train of thought and it's not always the best. Although I had my presumptions about yesterday, I was mostly right about the things I presumed about but in the end, any problem can be overcome in a relationship if both are willing to. Being overcome by emotion is easy - anyone can flip out in anger or break down in sadness but having the courage to talk about things and reveal emotions, feelings and thoughts is the way to take things forward. There's nothing wrong with honesty, as long as you're honest with other people, you can be honest with yourself. 

Compromises can be the best solution, an agreement to conditions by both. As long as these promises are kept to, things can move forward back to the way they were. If not then things fall apart again. But in order for compromises to work, you have to have faith, trust and belief in each other... 

Although I don't feel strong enough to have complete faith and trust because I'm scared of being hurt again, I want to try for once and believe that I can have faith... Maybe if I show that I do have faith and belief, things will start to change. If I never have faith, things will never move forward and I won't be happy again. So, really, both of us must change in order for things to get better. 

Putting your feelings on the line can be like a double-edged sword.

When you tell someone exactly how you feel about them, you become vulnerable and exposed. But if you don't, how will they ever know?

I thought what I had was happiness, but happiness can always change within a matter of days, weeks, months. Things that happen are out of your control, decisions that other people make that affect you and your life. You feel like everything you said had been thrown back in your face and everything is a lie. You find that you think about the same thing everyday, you experience the same sadness everyday wondering where all your happiness had gone. I feel exactly like this now.

I rarely ever come out about my feelings and sad things in a blog, I'd rather keep my entries happy so I can look back and read and laugh about things a few years down the line. But right now, maybe talking about things like this will help put my heart at ease a bit more. When you tend to like someone so much that it hurts but you find that you can't do anything about the hurt because your hurt means their happiness. When the person you care about doesn't try, when the person you care about doesn't make the effort to make you happy, when the person you care about doesn't consider your feelings - these things cut deep. It hurts a lot when the person that is supposed to make you feel like the happiest person on Earth ends up making you feel like the lowest priority in their life - all because of one thing, one choice that they made in life.

Life used to be so perfect until recently when one person managed to upset me for days, I really started to think that I meant a lot to that person - after months of not believing, I started to believe. But after this week, I'm second thinking everything. I think the hardest thing to accept is that I'm never important to this person, I'm the last thing they think about when they wake up, the last thing they think about when they go to bed. How things have changed so much is their fault, I just can't find blame in myself because everything happened because of his choices. I don't see how I fit into their day anymore, I might still be theirs in name but do they treat me like they should?

So what do I do from here? I only have 2 choices - make them choose or leave. I'm that close.

This stress is unreal.

I'm dying of lack of sleep, over-fried brain, some out-of-nowhere motivation to revise when I should be resting. I'm pretty much on zombie mode right now because of exams. 

So I had my 5th exam today and surprisingly what I thought would be a disaster actually turned out pretty well. Considering I revised less than half of the content, two questions actually came up that I could answer! I was celebrating before I even started the first question. Although they were strangely worded questions, I feel like I managed to answer the question properly to some extent. I made sure to include all the keywords from the questions into my answer so that also helps. Well, it was not like I had the choice to do any other questions was there? 

I had a very sleepless night yesterday, when I woke up, I felt worse than the day where I only had 3 hours of sleep and a day out with my boyfriend straight after. Either I woke up whilst I was in deep sleep or I actually didn't get much sleep at all. I remember tossing and turning for a good hour before I actually dozed off and then I remember waking up sometime around 5-6am and then managing to get back to sleep. Disrupted sleep sucks. I can never get used to sleeping at 1-2am and waking up early. 

Anyway, the point is that driving back home after my exam was hellish. Not to mention, some golf tournament had me stuck in traffic near my uni for a good 20 minutes. 

Last exam in 5 days! The only positive thing in life at the moment.

I need to stop staying up till 5am every day.

Although I've proven to myself that I can go and sit an exam with 3 hours of sleep it's not ideal for me. This is a result of not having any 9am lectures for the whole of my third year - it's turned me into a lazy shit at most. How can psychology have lectures set at times like 4pm-6pm but the exams are mostly 9am?

Another reason why I've been up at such nocturnal times is my boyfriend. He's completely screwed up his sleeping pattern derp. So we have phone calls at 3am, ending around 5am. I don't think either of us can fix our sleeping patterns, it's just not possible unless we have 9-5 jobs. On another note, he really made me smile yesterday, he told me he left me a note from 3 months ago when he first came round to my house LOL. Obviously, I didn't find it so I was searching around for it and eventually found it crumpled up in the corner of my bookcase squashed by my huge folder. Ahh he's so adorable.

So I'm supposed to be revising right now but I've become so lazy because freedom is almost here. Instead, I'm sat waiting around for my deliveries. I bought quite a lot of clothes to last me for the summer (providing there is a summer this year), I bought a cardboard box (yes, a cardboard box) so I can ship my books away for money - I'm getting £60 for most of my textbooks. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't considering all of my books were bought for around £300 =/ I'm getting like 1/5 of the money back... sigh. But oh well, they won't do any good sitting on my bookshelf and will just end up in the attic a few years later. Finally saying goodbye to psychology!

On the positive side, I've been losing weight - the pill didn't really affect my weight, actually, it made me lose weight. I'm back on the patch now which didn't do much to my weight but I really feel like it makes me retain weight easier, so I might need to be careful. It's not worth staying on the pill for big breasts and weight loss in exchange for depression and paranoia.

Mum and Dad are going to Edinburgh on Sunday for a 3 day holiday. I hope they don't get lost, we've taught Mum how to use Google maps on her phone like 100 times already. Somehow she's still under the impression that she can't use Google maps on holiday even though she's in England. She thinks she can only use Google maps in London LOL. My parents and technology really don't go well together, yet they both have an iPhone each. Doh.

Time to revise...

2 more weeks.

Well, less than that actually.

Less than 2 weeks until I get my freedom back.

Less than 2 weeks until can say goodbye to psychology - these 3 years of study has taught me more about myself than I could ever have thought. I remember choosing psychology because I didn't have a strong interest in anything else at the time. It was pretty much choose a degree for the sake of being a graduate by the next three years. The first year was horrible because I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to do this, I didn't make the effort in revision and ended up with a bad grade by the end. Second year was when I started developing an interest for the things I was learning. At that time, I had learnt a lot about myself and somehow, the interest in speech and language sciences became my interest by the end. Now third year, I found reality, had time to think about my future, found my future, and now working towards my future.

I don't regret taking psychology at all, but if I could turn back time, I do wish I took something that could get me a degree-related job, personally. For me, it was more like I went with my interests rather than think about what could benefit me the most. Ideally, we all want to graduate and use our knowledge in that subject in our future jobs. The lack of jobs in the scientific field is actually striking - the majority of people I know that study science at degree level either go on to study PhD or end up getting a job completely unrelated to their field. But like I said, I don't regret taking psychology, it hasn't led me into a dead end, in fact, it's made me a better person. I finally understand myself compared to the me 2 years ago who was unsure of many things, unconfident in myself, a complete worry-wart. The only downside is me trying to analyse the behaviour of everyone around me - damn psychology influence. Not saying people have a hard time finding a job doing psychology though, it's all about transferrable skills rather than the degree you study. True enough, some jobs want you have a degree in something specific, but those jobs are highly specialised ones. No one said someone that studies psychology can't go on to work in an office.

So it's quite sad to be leaving Royal Holloway, July 19th will be my last time at Royal Holloway when I graduate. I'll be saying bye bye to the castle, bye bye to the Wolfson building, bye bye to Bedford library which is always overpacked. I wouldn't say I had much of a student life living at home for 2 years and only being out there in the countryside for my first year. But during the first year, I met many awesome people who I still remain friends with and hopefully will always be a part of my life even after we go separate ways. It's always hard to keep contact with friends when you part ways but if they really matter in your life, you'll make the effort to keep them in your life, and they would do the same if you mattered to them equally as much.

With that said, roll on the last 2 exams. I CAN'T WAIT TO BE OFFICIALLY A GRADUATE.

Microgynon 30.

DO NOT TAKE THIS PILL.

After doing some extensive research on this pill, I've come to the conclusion that many women experience the same side effects that are less well documented in the leaflet and are actually side effects that are more damaging to everyday life than the ones that are listed.

Microgynon 30 is a contraceptive pill, like all contraceptive pills, they contain a fair amount of estrogen and progesterone (female hormones) to prevent ovulation every month, hence, preventing pregnancy. Side effects listed are things like weight changes, skin irritations, bloatedness, nausea, headaches, breast tenderness etc etc. Depression is sometimes listed but they really fail to highlight how damaging the depression can be.

Different women respond differently to medications but from a personal experience, microgynon made my life hell for 3 weeks. Within the 2nd week, I started to feel depressed, anxious and paranoid, the only thing distracting me from these feelings was exams. Nothing changed about my concentration but when nightfall came especially, I became a different person, I would doubt everyone and everything. My relationship became a little strained when it was comfortable before, I started doubting my boyfriend, questioning him for my own reassurance. I barely spoke to my parents, but they didn't suspect a thing because of exams, they thought I was working hard when in reality I was hiding away with my own depression and paranoia in my room. Things gradually got worse on my 3rd week, the pack was finishing anyway so I thought maybe symptoms might improve the longer I took the pill. I was wrong. I was inconsolable by the 3rd week, luckily I had done most of my revision the week before hence I didn't have a tonne of stress from exams but my relationship was stressing me out, I was only stressing myself out to be honest. I was paranoid, I had doubts about my feelings for my boyfriend, I felt like it hurt to be with him because of all these doubts I had. I cried about 3 times a day, I found myself crying to sleep every night during the week, I cried until I was too tired to cry anymore. I would wake up the next day, have some lunch then proceed to get back into bed, curl up and cry some more. My life was awful, a complete mess.

The pack ended on Thursday so after not taking a pill on Friday, I started to feel a little better. I took it upon myself to research about this pill and what led me into such bizzarre behaviour. I read about what different women had to say about microgynon 30 and I found pretty much the same responses in terms of depressive symptoms and paranoia. It was nothing like I'd ever experienced before - some reports even say that some women when assessed, had symptoms of clinical depression. I even heard that some women were turned away by their GP when they raised their concerns about feeling depressed, some even saying that it was "nothing to be worried about" and that these were all "normal" side effects associated with this type of pill. If my GP told me the same, I would demand to be switched onto a different brand at least, not turned away saying that it is normal.

So yeah, these are my experiences with Microgynon 30. Definitely not a contraceptive pill I would recommend or take again. If I were on this pill for longer, my life would be so different. The only benefits of this pill is that it cleared up my skin marginally and my breasts got bigger *shrugs* - definitely not benefits that I would put myself through that again for.

Most stressful time of my life.

Almost halfway through my exams, my exams are going well but I can't say the same about life. 

Whether it's these pills I'm taking or not, I'm experiencing some episodes of extreme stress, sometimes depression, withdrawal from the world. The only upside is that I can concentrate on my exams but I have a feeling doing nothing day in day out apart from waking up to revision is depressing me in many ways.

Along with this, the stress is affecting my relationship as well. Because it's early, it's also very fragile. I realised I've become needy because of exam time. I'm depending on nobody but him and it's not a good thing, for us both. For people that have known me a long time, I don't like depending on other people too much. So for this to happen, it's stressful. It's affecting my daily life. It's a problem that will resolve itself with time though so I think at this moment, I just need to concentrate on exams and hopefully after, things will be different. 

Sometimes, I'm a paranoid mess as well. Ugh.