Six weeks ago I started taking birth control pills. This was something I had always been adamently against, feeling it was unnatural to artificially regulate the cycle and exposed a woman to a ridiculous amount of uncomfortable side effects, all in the name of an easy excuse to have unprotected sex.

Then the cramps got worse.

I listened to my friends' experiences and did ridiculous amounts of research online, and did a complete 180. I realized that if modern medicine could make the misery I was going through every couple weeks disappear, as well as make it really, really unlikely that I would produce an 'oops' baby, why the hell not? Wouldn't I be doing my body a disservice when the alternative was available to me?

The first couple weeks were fine....then the nausea started. Then the soreness. Irritiability at some point, although that's hard to distinguish from my normal personality. Then the bleeding. Then more bleeding. Then everything was ok for awhile, then MORE NAUSEA. I couldn't eat a full meal at dinnertime, and I started to turn to chicken soup and ginger ale. I changed the time I took it and things got a little better, but now I just get the nausea a few hours after I eat instead of before, and MY BREASTS HURT CONSTANTLY.

So, instead of a week or two of misery, it's constant annoyance. I know I have to give it longer to get used to it, but goddamn I feel like a depressed person. Half the time I want to cry, half the time I want to snap and scream at somebody, half the time I want to run away, and the other half I just want to feel like myself again. (ignore the too many halves thing). Shit, there's tears building right now. I don't sleep enough, I can't take my job (not the CA thing), I feel like I'm responsible for everything and I don't get to have time to myself, I don't get to have fun. And when Ryan tells me to have fun I tense up even more and get unbelievably frustrated at him for telling me to be something I'm not. Stupid little things like sending out e-mails and making fliers seem unmanageably huge. There aren't enough hours in the day to be all the people I want to be, or need to be. At the end of the day I just want to be myself, get enough sleep, do all the reading, participate in class, eat healthy, have time to hit the gym, spend time with my friends and my floor, and feel like I'm doing good for myself. I feel myself slipping down this gentle slope and the angle is getting steeper, and there's less and less to hang on to.

I don't want to be medicated, and despite the evidence I don't want to be a constant 'poor me, give me sympathy and let me drag you down too'-type person. I just wish there was a magic button I could push to make me feel like myself again. I wish there was a consultant I could go to who I could give all the input to, everything that I am and I do juxtaposed with everything I feel I need to be happy, and then get the output of exactly how to make it happen. But for now...if you're still reading this after seeing the words 'birth control', 'bleeding', and 'BREASTS HURT', then you probably have a genuine, even vested interest in what makes me happy and why the hell I get so miserable. You're probably Ryan. Or my stalker girlfriends who live down the hall. Thanks for being you.