Well, it's in. I have no idea how I did because I'm a terrible judge of my own work, but right now I'm just relieved to have gotten that essay done and out of my way. I talked to some classmates who said they had a really hard time writing it too, which made me feel a little better. I don't have another essay due until the 18th, and as far as I know that'll be it until exams. I've decided I'm going to be as kind to myself as I can for the next few days because I have this terrible feeling in my gut, like I'm headed for a crash.

I don't know why I hate myself so much, why I insist on putting so much pressure on myself. My counsellor suggested that I write a list of all the things that I like about myself, and I did it, but it didn't make me feel any better. Staring at that list all I could think was "So what?" My parents call me every Sunday, and this week my dad was telling me how brilliant he thinks I am and how far he thinks I'm going to go and how proud he is of me, and when I hung up I wanted to be sick. I feel like such a fraud. What makes things even worse is that sometimes he'll comment on how I sound so much better than I did this time last year, and then I feel my mood deflate and I have to work really hard to sound happy when seconds ago I actually meant it. My entire life has been about making my parents proud -- it took me until last year to realize that my happiness was not directly related to my parents' happiness. I thought that to take pride in my work, it had to make my parents proud. Now I've realized that's not the case, and I'm struggling to figure out what I want, who I want to be and how I'm going to become that person, and in the meantime the only life I do know -- the overachiever, the responsible one, the strong one with her eye on the ball -- is falling away and I'm really scared. I don't know who I am any more. I don't know how I'm ever going to figure that out. I'm afraid of being stuck like this, feeling lost and overwhelmed for the rest of the year, maybe even the rest of my life.