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Which would you rather be:

a) pretty but constantly depressed (and I’m not talking about the “I’m sad” kind of depression. I mean the sort where you spend hours either crying your eyes out for absolutely no reason at all, or staring into space because you honestly don’t care whether you live or die the next minute) and picking stupid fights with your boyfriend just because you can?

or

b) not-so-pretty, but at least you’re capable of being as happy as a mentally unstable 22 year old can get?

Believe me, this is not an easy question to answer.

I’ve been taking this birth control pill Yasmin for some time now, not so much for the “I’m too young to get knocked up” reasons as the “my skin has been ugly ever since I hit puberty and I’ve done everything to make my skin stop breaking out and for just once in my life I’d like to be pretty” reasons. My mom wasn’t too thrilled about my decision to get on the pill due to our family’s history of breast cancer. She was convinced that the estrogen in the pill would transform my breasts into little tumor farms. To appease her I had my gynecologist run some (rather expensive) tests on me and when everything checked out okay, I made my way to the drug store with my prescription of Yasmin.

Little did my mom or I realize that breast cancer is the least of the more serious side effects to get worried about.

Over the next couple of weeks, not only did my skin do a wonderful job of clearing up - I debunked the myth that the pill fattens you up like crazy. The other positive side effect I got from the pill is that it took my appetite to a place far far away and made me almost skinny like a model. For about two weeks I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a couple of mouthfuls during every meal, no matter how delicious the food in front of me was. It even came to a point where the only reason why I bothered eating was to make the grumbling noises in my tummy stop. Every time I went out my friends, the first thing they’d tell me was that I looked prettier and skinnier than the last time they saw me. That made me feel damn good - but not good enough to make up for the huge waves of depression that kept hitting me once I started taking the pill.

It started out as me being ten times more cranky and sensitive than I usually am. Random little things that wouldn’t normally have bothered me, like getting lost in a strange city, became disasters of epic proportions - and I would deal with it all like some helpless heroine. (If you had gone with us to Cebu and Bohol, I bet you would have insisted on leaving me on the roadside. I would have done that, if I were another person.) When Ale left the Philippines I cried for hours everyday, but I wasn’t too worried since that was obviously normal reaction. However, the depression didn’t go away once we settled back into our familiar, comfy, long-distance routine. In fact, it got even worse. One minute I’d be okay and the next, I’d either be crying for no reason or picking a fight with Ale for some ridiculous reason or another. Like he’d make some offhand comment that wouldn’t have bothered me on a normal day, but because it’s been a while since I had a normal day I’d end up blowing things completely out of proportion. Really, with the way I’ve been acting up the past few weeks, I’m surprised I’m not single yet.

I can’t decide which is the worst part though - the moments where I’d be staring off into space feeling numb and empty because I pretty much lost the will to do anything (except stay in bed and watch Dexter or Grey’s Anatomy for hours), or the unexplained crying fits like the one I had last night. What frightened me about that episode is that it wasn’t just any kind of crying. It’s the way women cry when they’ve just been dumped or when someone they love has died, except I haven’t been dumped and no one I know died recently. For over an hour, my bed was practically shaking because I was sobbing so hard. I tried to calm myself down and figure out why I was freaking out so badly, but that made me cry even harder because I couldn’t come up with one good reason for that heavy, profound sadness. I wish I could attribute the mood drop to yesterday being my brother’s death anniversary, but that wasn’t even it. I had a similar crying fit just a few days ago, and it was just as unexpected and unexplainable as last night’s.

Getting depressed or crying for no reason is nothing new to me, but it’s never happened this frequently nor this intensely. I did some poking around the internet and discovered that the progestin component in Yasmin (or any other combination birth control pill) wreaks havoc on your serotonin levels by increasing a brain enzyme that inhibits the production serotonin. Serotonin is that neurotransmitter in your brain that affects your mood. If you have too little, you’re probably depressive and not much fun like I am. If you have too much, you’re probably one of those irritatingly chipper people who deserve a bullet in between their eyes. So I guess when you already have too little serotonin to begin with, and you take a pill that kind of kills what little serotonin you already have - it’s amazing I haven’t tried to kill myself yet.

Despite the wonderful things the pill has done to my physical appearance, I stopped taking Yasmin last Sunday. Being prettier and skinnier doesn’t mean anything when I can no longer appreciate the simple fact that I’m alive. Hell, these days it takes a Herculean amount of effort go out and show the world that I’ve gotten prettier and skinnier. I’m a little worried that my mood hasn’t improved yet, but I guess I’ll see how I’m like over the next couple of days.

So have any of you ever tried taking the pill or know someone who did, and had a reaction as bad as mine? How did you or that person deal with it? And do you think I should stop taking the pill, or take it with a combination of serotonin supplements? Really, I should be asking my gyno all these questions instead of consulting random Internet doctors. Unfortunately, her waiting room is always filled with pregnant women, screaming babies, and (for some reason) nuns, and I don’t really feel like surrounding myself with a lot of estrogen right now.

When Ale finally left for Italy, I thought the hardest part would be falling asleep at night. I was wrong. It’s waking up in the morning that gets so unbearably lonely.

I’ve never been a morning person. I love sleeping in, and anyone in my family or anyone I’ve traveled with can attest to the fact that I’m always last to wake up. I don’t know why but during the two weeks we were together I’d wake up an hour before he does and just sit there, watching him sleep. I’d be thinking too much as usual, about random disconnected things, and I’d come up with some minor revelation about life, myself, or us, and I’d want to talk to him about it. But he looks so peaceful sleeping there, like a little boy, so I remain seated and quiet, watching him. When I feel like the thought bubble is about to burst I start waking him up slowly. I’d crawl back to bed and wrap my arms around his waist and start shaking him gently. “Panda, Panda, Panda,” I’d whisper into his ear. He’d groan, wrap his arms around my neck, and bury my face into his chest to make me shut up. I’d pull away and repeat, until he finally opens his eyes and smiles (even though I know deep down he wants to kill me for not letting him sleep half an hour longer).

I love the way he looks at me in the morning.

These days all I have when I wake up is a pillow underneath my arm, my other hand clutching on to the t-shirt he’d sleep in, which I keep under my head.

I know that this isn’t a gone-forever thing, like death or a break-up. I know I should be happy because the two weeks we had was more than amazing. But then I start remembering all the stuff we did together - hanging out with my friends, riding jeepneys, me playing guitar onstage with him watching from the front row, swimming in the ocean, roaring through the Bohol countryside on a motorcycle, getting lost in Cebu. I remember how excited I was when I went with Anne and Bim to pick him up at the airport very early on Sunday morning, and how Bim wouldn’t stop making fun of me for being so excited and how embarrassed that made me feel - but in a very good way. I remember all these things and I get so so sad, because it feels like I’ll never be that happy again. There are times when it’s okay, when we talk on iChat like how it started, and I feel like I’m not going to shed another tear until I see him later this year. And then there times, such as now, when it occurs to me that there’s nobody who’ll make silly faces at me to calm me down when I start freaking out or nobody to tell me to eat my vegetables at dinner. And thinking that makes me so sad, the only thing I can do is cry to the songs that remind me of him while inhaling the scent of his aftershave (that he accidentally left). I can’t even begin to describe how happy I was when he was here, and how fucking lonely it gets now that he isn’t physically around.

I wish there was someone I could talk to about this. I mean I’ve told my friends how sad I get and although they’re probably tired of hearing about it, I don’t think they’d tell me to shut up. But I haven’t even begun to describe to them how lonely it really gets. Nobody is around during the worst part, in the mornings, when my chest gets so heavy with sadness and the only thing I can do to feel lighter somehow is smoke myself to death in the bathroom and cry until my eyes are swollen for the rest of the day.

Well, I suppose that’s what blogs are for.

“Tell me a story.”

“A story? What kind of story?”

“Bedtime story. About yourself.”

“About myself?”

“Mhmm.”

“Hmm. Okay. I’ll tell you a story, and you tell me what part of my life this is about.”

“Okie.”

“Once upon a time, there was this boy who just got home from a land far far away. He was very jetlagged from his journey and couldn’t sleep, and he wanted to find something interesting to do or someone interesting to talk to. So he walked around the city where he lives but he couldn’t find anyone. When he went back home he switched on his computer and got online to pass time. After spending a while looking around, he came across this blog that contained so many fascinating ideas and thoughts. He liked it so much that he sent a message to the person who wrote it, asking her if she’d like to talk sometime. But this boy is a very pessimistic boy who didn’t think that she would write him back.”

“Why is he so pessimistic?”

“That’s just the way he is. Maybe you should ask him yourself.”

“Oh.”

“The person he had written wasn’t online, so he went out to get a pizza because that’s what he does on Saturday nights. When he got back home, he checked his computer to see if he got a reply. To his surprise, she had written back, saying that she wanted to talk to him as well. He got on Messenger and the hours that he spent talking to her just flew by because they were so different, but they agreed on so many things. When he went to bed, he couldn’t stop thinking about that wonderful person and how he couldn’t wait to talk to her again.”

“So what happens next? Did he ever get to talk to her again?”

“I’ll tell you the rest of the story some other time. Right now, you need to get some sleep.”

He never got around to finish telling the story. She hasn’t had any sleep yet.

I miss my Panda