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In November of 2019, after a hell week in Pharmacy school (5 quizzes and an exam), along with my car breaking down in the middle of that week, it was safe to say I was overly stressed. During everything, though, I felt fine and was handling things well. For months I had been complaining of severe neck pain and long episodes of brain fog that I blamed on being too much nicotine from the new Juul I was using from quitting smoking months prior. I reduced the nicotine percentage and was slightly better. The Friday of that hell week though, unbeknownst to me would be the turning point I never knew was coming. Thursday, November 7th, I laid down in bed and started the hour-long process of going to bed for me, as it usually takes me that long, or longer, to fall asleep. Normal thoughts of the day raced through my head light a tornado like they always do. But, my brain somehow picked out this random thought and decided to focus on it. “What would it feel like to die?” more specifically, “Hey, think about the nothing-ness that IS death afterwards”. Now I am actually religious, so this didn’t compute with me. I felt a little guilty that I actually wondered what it would be like if there was just nothing-ness after I died. Like……eternal nothing-ness. I thought to myself “will I ever be conscious again?” or things like “what else is there after we die”. All of these thoughts I have thought of before and simply breezed by them and have never once stuck to them this long. However, something grabbed a hold of me that night and didn’t let go for a while. As I lay there, I could feel the physical sensations of fear streaking throughout my body. It was almost hot and cold sensations at the same time. They were in my chest and my arms and flowed through my legs…….then it stopped. I was able to brush everything off and finally fall asleep. Then….. the next day started my journey with the worst depressive episode I’ve ever been through in my life. Friday, November 8th, 2019, I woke up in time for school as I normally do at 6:00am, got shower and got dressed and headed out the door. I noticed I felt more tired and foggy head than normal and thought it was just because I was tired. I powered through and got to school. But something was still off. I was….. more inside myself. I felt so….. disconnected from everyone. My friends weren’t my friends. The people I sat with at my table at school felt more like objects. I was really taken back by this feeling and felt a general since of discomfort the whole day. As I am an avid nap taker, I thought I might as well and leave school a little early and go home to rest and nap these feelings away. Figuring I would wake up refreshed and feeling much better, I let myself sleep as long as I wanted to since it was Friday and I had no obligations that pressing weighing down on me yet. As I awoke from the nap, I immediately had a heavier and quicker breath. I was so confused as to why this was happening. Then the thoughts of death came back. Was I having an existential crisis? Then I felt the fear. Pure, raw, and screeching fear associated with the nothing-ness that was death. I could feel the cold and hot sensations again. And this time, it came with the intense tremors. I started to feel like I was going crazy. Like, “Hey, I guess pharmacy school has finally broke me. Here we go.” I got extremely nauseous and started to dry heave until I eventually threw up what little was in my system. Then, for a little while it calmed down enough to somewhat function. My fiancée had gotten home and was wondering why I was home so early. I told him that I wasn’t feeling great and came home early. I told him I was feeling sad, but nothing else. He tried to generally cheer me up but nothing helped. Which worried me even more. Why was I not feeling happy? Actually if I think about it, I cant feel happy at all! I don’t want to do anything but lay on the couch. This weekend I needed to study for a major exam and I wanted to vomit at the thought of sitting down and studying. I physically shook when trying to pull out my laptop and study. I was getting increasingly dizzy and that started to worry me even more. I thought for sure I was going crazy. Surely thoughts of death was the first sign and that I was going downhill fast. I decided to just relax that Saturday and just wait things out. I ended up breaking down that day while watching a video titled “How to get over an Existential crisis”. As the guy talked about the step of getting over the fear of death, I thought about death more, and this consumed my body with panic and that deep feeling of emptiness. As I broke down, I asked my fiancée for help, finally. He was very shocked and taken back by how emotional I was. He thought I just needed to just cry it out and offered his shoulder to cry on. However, as I cried in his arms, (mind you, this was the hardest and deepest Ive ever cried before) I could tell I was headed for something bad if I didn’t seek help. But, I chose, again, to sit on the couch, relax, and take it easy and see how I felt later. As long as I didn’t move from my comfortable position on the couch underneath my weighted blanket, I was okay. However, when I would stand up to go to the bathroom, my mind would race and my legs and hands would start to shake and my chest felt like it was imploding in on itself and the feelings of utter terror felt like they were physically dragging me down. It felt like I was walking through thick mud and was trapped. Sunday came and went with me generally looking up videos on “ panic disorder”, “existential crisis”, and “midlife crisis”, and even “how to recover from burnout”. I stumbled across this video of an Irish woman who was a licensed therapist that worked with people suffering with panic attacks and anxiety. She demonstrated some techniques on how to reduce the fear behind the panic by hyperventilating and bringing on the symptoms of panic in order to tell yourself that these feelings would not harm me. After doing the exercise once I was in immediate temporary relief from the symptoms. I cried when I felt them subside, suddenly I found something that would help. And I clung to it like my life depended on it. I did it over and over and over and over that evening. It helped for a while. But then it was time to go to sleep again, and that brought on the panic of having to endure the next morning. As expected I woke up Monday morning realizing I was not going to be able to go to school because of how I was feeling. When I woke up that Monday morning, I felt the worst feeling of dread I have ever experienced in my life. I didn’t want to exist anymore, I felt like I could NOT go on. My knees buckled under the weight of my hopelessness and I broke down crying again. This time even harder and longer. My fiancée and I decided that I would be going to the doctor that day. He asked me if I could go by myself so that he could go to school since he is in his second year of medical school and was super stressed about his work load. I said yes, realizing all I needed to do was talk to someone and they would give me some medicine and then I would be fine. I walked in to the examination room and talked to a young black lady who was the nurse about my experience over the last couple of days. I told her about my thoughts of death, and how permanent that felt to me and my fear around that. Then I told her I had been having symptoms of panic and that I was just really scared and had no idea what to do now because I was in pharmacy school and didn’t know how to handle this and school. She so supportive and reassuring, telling me she had been there before as she has bipolar disorder. I cried again. This lady I just met was being so nice to me and reassuring me I was not alone. Then, she told me to hang tight and that she would be right back. Then another nurse comes and tells me that the are making me go to the emergency room. I was slightly confused as I never once told the nurse that I was having suicidal thoughts. She told me that when depressed patients bring up the ideas of death, that they are at risk for suicidial ideation and that I need to make sure I go the emergency room immediately. I walked out of the office so confused on why they wouldn’t help me, but I called my fiancée and told him what was going on. He said he only had a short time before his class was ending and that he would go with me after his class was over. I went home and change and waited, very anxiously, for him to get done. When we got to the ER, I was immediately whisked back by a nurse who saw me in the waiting room. While we were walking back to my room, she leaned over and whispered “So……… thoughts of suicide?”. I was immediately angry at the nurse at the doctors’ office who had been so nice. She straight up told the nurse at the hospital I was having thoughts of suicide! Hello? I’m afraid of death, I don’t want to kill myself. I brushed it off as I was finally getting the help I thought I needed. However, I was slightly wrong. I didn’t realize this until way later. As soon as I stretched out in my hospital bed, 3 people came in to assess me. All while my head was spinning, I had to answer so many question about my health and how long had this been going on. I bet I had to recount the entire thing about 5 times. But, finally my doctor came in and reassured me that I had had my first run in with extreme anxiety with panic symptoms. He assured me that it was manageable and gave me a hydroxyzine and a Xanax to calm me down enough to go home and get some rest. I was discharged feeling GREAT. That Xanax work really quick and soon enough I was angry at myself for letting my mind go that far into despair. I am a fairly rational person, and am usually the one people go to for advice on deeper topics like self-esteem and confidence. But, I found myself to be a hypocrite. Why was this happening to me? Was I scared of school? Was I just legit going crazy? I had no idea what was going on and how I was going to handle this on top of going to school? I was terrified that school had broken me at this point, and the thought of going back scared me so much that I was willing to take a leave of absence based on medical issues. I wanted to run away from school as fast as possible. The stress of all of it had left me shattered on the floor. The next morning I went back to the doctor to clarify that I was not at all suicidal and wanted to talk to the doctor about the anxiety I had been feeling lately. I talked to the doctor and we both decided that it would be best if I started taking Lexapro 10mg once a day for the depression, and Wellbutrin XL 150mg once a day for my anxiety. I decided I HAD to go back to classes on Wednesday because there were quizzes and tests I had to do so that I wouldn’t get left behind. While sitting in class, I was looking around me at the people in my class and could not feel the connection with anyone. I looked at my friends across the room at their assigned tables and felt I had never met them before. I was fear stricken the entire day. I was so afraid of what I was feeling, I shut down. As I went to lab, I could feel the panic streaking through again. In a flash, I could feel buzzes fly across my chest. I could physically here the buzzing in my ears and it was like I could only see the things that were in my direct line of sight. On the outside, I was just a little jumpy and sweaty. On the inside, however, I was fully experiencing World War III inside my own body. I stuck it out the whole day and call my fiancée trying to tell him I couldn’t do this. I explained to him that I was scared of what school was doing to my mental health and that I could take a leave of absence on the basis that my mental health was declining fast. He immediately responded with panic. We are both students living on our own and have no means of income instead of our loans we use to get by. How were we going to live with just one persons’ income? How was it fair to him that he pull all of the weight? How was he going to look after me, go to medical school, and provide the money necessary to live? I resisted and threw out excuses but deep down I knew he was right. But, in my head at the time, I really thought I was going crazy. And how in the hell was I suppose to continue school while Im this sick? So he suggested that I go to the doctor again and get some advice on what to do rather than to quit school. This started my deep dive in to learning about everything I could to help me along day to day in order to get better. I went to school on Thursday fulling expecting panic attacks all day. And I was right. I went to lab again with a full panic episode and took breaks as often as I could to go to the bathroom and breath for a little while. This didn’t really help but it got me away from the staring eyes of my classmates. After school I went back to my apartment. My fiancée had not gotten back from school yet as I had left early because I didn’t have anything else pressing that day. As I sat on the couch, I stared at the wall trying to understand what was happening. I was still in fear from the car ride home where it felt like the car I was driving was going to collapse in on me. As I stared off, I started getting more and more fearful of what was happening. Thousands of questions were going through my mind about what was happening. What I really going crazy? Could I be in the process of dying? Was I having a heart attack? Had this triggered a psychotic break? Was I suppose to be expecting to hear voices now or see snakes in the room with me? Was I becoming increasingly paranoid of other peoples’ intentions toward me? All of these question in my head hit me like a ton of bricks several time over. So much so that I found myself on the floor of the bathroom dry heaving. I remember thinking, “I HAVE to do something about this. This can’t be right. I have to call someone.”. The only person that came to mind to call was my mom. She had always known how to calm me down sometimes in difficult situations. I quickly and with intense tremors, called my mother. I felt so much relief when I heard her voice on the other end. “Hello?” “What’s wrong?” “Are you okay?”. I wanted to explain so much. I wanted to tell her I was scared. I wanted to tell her everything that had happened in that very moment. But all I could get out was, “I need help.” I remember saying this while staring at my dark chestnut bathroom sink cabinet while on the floor in a fetal position. I had used my shirt as a pillow to keep my self comfortable. But I didn’t feel like I deserved it. My mom tried to gather as much information as she could but all I could say for about 3 minutes of the phone call was “I need help”. I know this scared her but I was at my lowest I’ve ever been. It was urgent. It was life threaten (or so it felt). I then told her, “just talk”. As she talked to me I felt more and more relief. I finally got up off of the floor and sat on the couch and just spilled my guts to her. I was so afraid of what she would think, but I didn’t care. I needed to tell someone. She was really sweet about everything as I cried, trying to apologize that I couldn’t handle my shit. She was in Oregon for my dads work and said she would get on the next flight and come help me. This alone brought me a little more relief. Friday was not better, in fact it was exactly the same. Panic, anxiety, trapped feelings, disconnection, no appetite. By this point all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and not move for the rest of my life. I cried again that night and call my mother again. She reminded me she would be there with me the next week on that Saturday. I tried to pull it together and find out somethings that maybe would help. I researched until I could find some similarities to what I was going through. The first thing I came across was “panic disorder”. I was terrified. I would have to live with these symptoms for the rest of my life? No…. I couldn’t…… I couldn’t live like this everyday. I refused to believe it. What would help patients with panic disorder? Exercise. That was what I was going to do to help. I walked around our entire apartment complex for 30 mins a day to see if it would help. I also found journaling and meditation. I tried those things every day and everything was still the same. I changed trajectories with my diagnosis and thought maybe it is just really bad anxiety and I wouldn’t have to live with these panic symptoms forever. But, I remember trying to get out of my apartment that weekend and thinking to myself, “Are you paranoid of other peoples intentions?” “People are looking at you”, “What if you were going through a paranoid mental break?”. It was like a scary movie that never ended. I went to target to try and get some fruit, which seemed like the only thing I could eat without wanting to throw up. I remember walking through target with flashes of panic streaking throughout my body and feeling so uncomfortable and scared about what was going on with me. I got my groceries and quickly left. I told my fiancée about the experience and he suggested that I actively tell myself that I am not going crazy. That seemed to be the primary thought that was scaring me so much. And of course, like I always do, I researched “going crazy”. This time though, it actually helped. Whatever resource I used, it stated that, “If you have to question if you’re going crazy, you’re probably not going crazy.” It explained how people that actually have problems with different realities and hallucinations, both auditory and visually, normally feel as if they are real and don’t notice that its out of their ordinary life. They simply can’t see, “if they are going crazy” or not. It was crude, but it worked. I worked on that idea for a couple of days and it really worked. I was slightly better, and when I say slightly, I mean slightly. The panic flashes weren’t as intense, but they were still there. I decided to continue to walk around the apartment again as the effects weren’t going to be immediate. However, the only way I kept myself from panicking while I walked was listening to motivational videos. And it had to be continuous. As soon as one video would be over, I would have to quickly choose another or I would be in my head again and going on a downward spiral. At several moments, I would look at the different trees around and just glance at some of the cars in their assigned parking spot and I wouldn’t think they were real. It was like I was seeing them, but from a perspective I couldn’t place. And of course, this frightened me. WHAT WAS HAPPENING? This central theme continued, even when my mother had gotten to my apartment to help with things. I would go to school, come back, cry, try to explain my feelings and then go to sleep. I couldn’t get a grip on things. One night I got home and was crying and felt so overwhelmed with dealing with all of these emotions and feelings that I tried to get some emotional support from my mother and she cracked. She was mentally drained from worrying about me so often that she decided to tell me to call my dad for help. I totally understood and called my father. He gave me some practical advice. “Just let that shit go, son” I laughed inside feeling like that was utter nonsense because that’s what I had been trying to do all along. But when I thought about it, I was so caught up in all of these fears associated with what was going on. All of those question were still swirling around in my head and I decided right then to just let it go….. it was as if an elephant standing steadfast on my chest had finally lifted his leg. I could feel my body changing in response to this new idea of letting my fears go. I came out of the room and to my mom’s surprise, she noticed color back in my face. I walked out of the room with hope. I could work on letting all of my fears go and try to get better. With this newfound hope I was going to be dedicated in finding solutions. I scoured the internet for anything and everything that could possibly help people with what I was going through. Yoga, meditation, diet, exercise, supplements, sleep hygiene, no sugar, low carb, keto diet, journaling, radical acceptance, therapy, CBT therapy, ECT therapy. I looked at everything and watched 10 videos on every topic to find what was going to work. I made it my mission to find a plan that was going to work for me. I finally narrowed it down to meditation, yoga, journaling, and my diet. For the next couple of weeks, this is what I did as well as try to find myself a therapist. I did yoga a couple of days and journaled and cried because I was overwhelmed and walked and tried to start eating more. I could feel myself slowly getting better but it was as if I was getting better centimeters at a time. Recovery was moving painfully slow and I would often get really overwhelmed and frustrated at myself. I wanted to just sleep ALL the time. I remember one day my mother wanted us to go to the casino just to get out and do something. I had a great time with her that night. However, the next day I was so physically and emotionally drained I slept literally all day and all night until the next morning. I only got up to use the bathroom and eat a little. In mid December, I was starting to get better. I would have maybe 2-3 good days followed by really bad days. We even decided to go to Arkansas to see a friend for a week and everyday I was there was a bad day. I tried to make the most of it, but the awareness of the physical sensations and the irrational fears were to strong to ignore or handle all of the time. Often I would wake up already shaking from anxiety. My jaw would be so clenched my teeth would chatter. I would be freezing and already dreading the day ahead. After we got back from Arkansas, things got slightly better. And I finally had found a therapist. Her name is Amanda. She’s about 4 foot 11 inches tall but she packs a punch when she notices a bad habit of mine or a bad label I have about myself. I have always had a great preconception of therapy. My friends always spoke highly of it. We all thought everyone needed therapy. So I was really excited to talk to Amanda about what was going on in my life. For me, it seemed like if I were to talk to my fiancée or my mother about anything and everything that was going on in my head, it would just make them worry about me even more. That worry would negatively effect their days and cause them more stress than was needed. So I appreciated Amanda. I was thankful she was available. The first session was just the intake session and she seemed super sympathetic and listened to me word vomit all over her. I even think at one point, she said, “Okay, this is just the intake day.” I was spouting out all of my problems already. But it seemed like I couldn’t help it. Words just came flowing out. About my family dynamic, my parents, my love life, my past traumas, the irrational thoughts in my head, what had been going on the month, my fears….. everything. She documented everything she deemed necessary and sent me on my way, telling me that therapy was a process and that change is not going to happen quickly. I was fully aware of this. After the intake session I was on a euphoric high. I had gotten a lot of stuff off of my chest and I felt like I could float away. It felt like for the first time, someone had actually listened to me. My whole life I had been the one people come to to listen to their problems and try and help with whatever they were going through, but I hadn’t had anyone to do that for me. Everyone seemed to be so caught up in their lives to have time for me. Because I was the irresponsible one or my problems felt childish to them. But Amanda just sat there and listened. She listened to EVERYTHING and didn’t judge me for anything. She corrected my language here and there when I would label myself badly but, for the most part she was sympathetic. I read somewhere that therapy was a place for the people who talk to listen, and for the people that listen to talk. I was the latter. I had been so preoccupied from listening to everyone that I forgot to assert myself when I needed someone to listen to me. That was Amanda. After the first therapy session, I was hopeful. For the first time since the beginning of this all, I was hopeful that this wouldn’t last forever. Those were my worst fears. That this would now be forever. That pharmacy school had triggered something that would now be a forever thing for me. For the next couple of weeks I would stick to what I knew worked, or at least somewhat worked. Yoga, meditation, journaling, getting my appetite back up, these were all things I thought were going to get me back to normal. I continued to search and search and search for self help information. I probably watched 1000 videos and read even more articles on every symptom and anything that would help them. I tried out supplement, vitamins, routines, sleep hygiene, light therapy, and anything little thing I could do to help at least a little. I noticed that in the mornings, my anxiety would be super extreme and then get progressively better. At night, it would feel as if I had never been anxious before in my life. I got scared to fall asleep because I didn’t want to deal with the morning anxiety. What was most distressing was my heart palpitations. I would wake up and suddenly feel like I was in the middle of running a marathon, sweating, breathing faster, super tense and could hear the vibrations of my body. I had to try to get a handle on this. I looked up some solutions and read that some patients who experience anxiety from the sensations usually are more fearful of the heart palpitations. Doctors usually can prescribe a beta blocker like metoprolol or propranolol to reduce the heart rate and without the heart palpitations, the anxiety and panic symptoms would decrease naturally. So, that’s what I thought my best option would be. I went back to my doctor and talk to her about all of this and she agreed. I was put on a low dose 12.5mg of metoprolol. After the first dose I could notice the effects the next morning. I was super anxious but I wasn’t in a panic. I was so thankful for this because it allowed me to breath in the mornings without feeling to fearful. It was Christmas break finally and I wanted to use this break to refresh and try to work harder on myself. The break was filled with setbacks and nights of crying from being overwhelmed. But they were also filled with random moments of intense love and joy as well. I noticed one night, while snuggling with my dog, a huge sense of love for him. I spent probably 30 minutes straight just cuddling him and hugging him. For weeks, my body and spirit had been stripped of my ability to feel anything. The love for my fiancée was gone, my sense of humor, my enjoyment of the thing I normally enjoyed, I couldn’t even feel the love for my sweet dog Teddy. But at this moment, I basked in this feeling. I didn’t want it to end. I missed this feeling so much. But I knew it would fade, so I stayed with it as long as possible. New year’s was even better. I spent New Year’s Eve with amazing friends and family. We played card games and board games and popped fireworks. We even bought lanterns that flew up in the air when you lit a candle underneath them and wrote all the things we wanted to leave in the past and all the things we wanted to bring into the new year. We all cried at the things we realized were holding us back and made a symbolic gesture to really do better this year and “let that shit go”. It was funny how my dads quote seemingly came into certain aspects of all of this. As the new year hit, I was hopeful again. I was having more good days than bad days. However, there were other things that were still bothering me. There was an extremely uneasy feeling I would get from time to time. Mainly on the car rides to school. It was that damn derealization. I HATED feeling like this. At random moments throughout the day I was SO aware of…..reality. Like, I knew I was a human and we are all humans, and all just doing things to fill the day and go to bed at night. It was as if I was a robot with no emotion, strictly actions. Or that, at times, it felt there was no point to anything we ever did. And for me, it scared me more than anything. Then there was the tension headaches, moments of extreme fatigue, morning depression, and anxiety. I was going to wait and see if things got better as time progressed. I started class finally and cried the day before and the day of school. I felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety the whole day of school. That same sense of disconnectedness that scared me to begin with. I was there all over again. I needed to get out…. So I left early that first day. I told my friend that I was leaving early because I thought I was going to start crying in class. She understood and told me to feel better. I got home and balled my eyes out. I didn’t want this anymore. I didn’t want to go through life feeling like this anymore. I was overwhelmed. I felt like my relationship was slipping, my grade were inevitably going to slip, my friend were pulling away, and I was going to be stuck like this forever. But after a talk with my fiancée he assured me he was not going anywhere and that I had made tons of progress and that I couldn’t forget that. He always knew how to calm me down and rationalize everything I was worried about. I always forgot about the progress I’ve made while I’m in one of those anxiety states. I would try to remember the phrase, “trust the process”. It usually calmed me down because it gave me a sense that it wasn’t going to be like this forever. I went to sleep dreading the morning and more so going to school the next day. I went to sleep like I normally did since I developed a night time routine. I started taking melatonin at 9pm so that I would be super tired by 10pm. In between 9pm and 10pm was my “buffer zone” I started journaling and reading during that hour, which I really enjoyed now. My fiancée got me into reading and I started to fall in love with fantasy books. So I journaled about my day on some nights and read the “Mistborn” series on the other nights. I even found a couple of prompted gratitude and anxiety journal I really like. Then I would listen to a wind down meditation that was 10 minutes that relied on me consciously relaxing all of my muscles, or turning them off for the night. It helped me fall asleep quicker. I hated the fact that it usually would take me an hour or more to fall asleep every night, so I wanted to change that. I developed a night routine that I really enjoyed and looked forward to. My days and nights were slowly filling with things I truly enjoyed and looked forward to. I started drinking green tea (decaf), eating oatmeal in the mornings, listening to inspirational videos, eating more fruit, and writing. I never knew how great writing would feel. I think throughout my life, I never had the privacy that I needed to write whatever I wanted. If I ever had a journal when I was younger, my mother always found it and read it. I got so embarrassed by one of the journal entries that my mom confronted me about that I never wrote in one again. Now that I had complete trust in my fiancée not reading my journals, I had the freedom I always craved to write down my unbridled emotions about the day without the fear of someone judging me. It was my outlet that was always going to agree with me, never look at me like I’m weird, or pass me off as childish or irresponsible. With my night time routine in place, I took that night as any other night and finally went to sleep. I woke up the next morning fully expecting to cry and find some excuse not to go to school and stay home in bed, but those thoughts never came. I was kind of excited to see my friends again. So my goal that day was to stay the whole day at school no matter how scared I was. I got to school expecting so much to happen. Panic, anxiety, disconnection, nausea, and even sadness…….but nothing. I was fine. I was able to concentrate in class and occasionally go to the bathroom to breathe and think. It wasn’t a perfect day, but I made it all day. I ended the school day with the panicky idea that I was trapped at school, which sucked because I had made it so far and I was already back to panic. But it didn’t last too long, maybe an hour or two. I got home and did some yoga and was back to, somewhat, normal. The next few days of school were okay, but I made it all day and continued to progress. I started noticing more and more everyday. One thing was, I was actually starting to…..enjoy pharmacy school again. I remember sitting in my Immunology class, really engaged and concentrated. I was getting back into my groove and was loving it. My therapist was thrilled about all of this. Now we come to today, January 23rd-ish 2020. My days are filling with a little worry about was symptoms I’m feeling. The only symptoms I feel now are very slight feelings of derealization, which are scary still, but don’t last near as long, maybe 20 minutes or so; tension headaches, small amounts of fatigue and sleepiness, and still that damn morning depression. I’ve shamefully skipped a couple of days of class due to the morning depression, but I’m still working on that. I still journal when I want and meditate every night. I also do yoga, not as often as I want, but I’m planning on starting back soon when my schedule gets a little less hectic. I have things I’m looking forward to as well. Im moving down to the coast soon with my fiancée and starting with a fresh new city. Im a couple of months away from my introductory rotations as a student pharmacist. I’m going to be living in the same apartment complex as my 3 friends from school and im so excited to be able to hang out with them more and spend more time with the people that mean the most to me. I want to start focusing on that more as well as diving deeper into the things that excite me about my career. Research is one of my passions and I am set up to start working with a professor of mine next term and I am beyond excited about that. She is someone I look up to and would love for her to be my mentor. I want to look on the positive side of things more and be way more gratuitous about the things I already have. Most of last year was focused on the things that I didn’t have and wanted and all the things my life lacked. I was so unappreciative of the things around me. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I kind of appreciate what happened to me. It really has opened my eyes to the things that are most important in life. I’m excited about the future.