The last thing I needed to do was to drop all the keys into the kitchen drawer to the right of the stove. That was the direc­tions given to us by the build­ing man­ager. Hubby was head­ing out the front door to the apart­ment that we had been only partly liv­ing in over the past year.

Now the apart­ment was empty; all the fur­ni­ture taken apart and stored in the rented Penske truck that caused such a major has­sle ear­lier that morn­ing. All of our belong­ings since mov­ing to Chicago more that 2.5 years ago were now in boxes, also in the rental truck.

I couldn’t help but feel sad; feel like, once again, I was a fail­ure. After all, I had moved to the city of Chicago in hopes of forg­ing a new life for me out­side of my sub­ur­ban life in Michi­gan; out­side of our fam­i­lies, who had now been inun­dated with babies and kids in gen­eral. The move came at a time when I needed it most; when the lat­est birth in the fam­ily had proven too much for me to deal with both phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally. I’m not proud of how I had acted  after the birth of Hubby’s niece, but (as much as I love her to pieces) I felt as if I was spi­ral­ing down­ward into the deep abyss of Infer­til­ity depres­sion. Again.

So yes, mov­ing to Chicago was a way to stop me from free-​​falling. It was a way for me to step back from Infer­til­ity and focus on some­thing new. It was a way for me to look at my life from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive with­out the emo­tional ties or mem­o­ries of what had hap­pened in Detroit since the day Hubby & I decided to start our own fam­ily. And now, I was mov­ing back to the same place I had “escaped” from back in Decem­ber of 2008.

Hubby noticed the sad­ness in my eyes as I headed to the front door after plac­ing the keys in the kitchen drawer. “It’ll be alright,” he told me, plac­ing his arm around my waist.

“Aren’t you even a lit­tle sad?,” I asked him know­ing how much he loved Chicago. I would have thought that he would have been a bit melan­choly over the whole move.

“We’re together,” Hubby told me. “And really, that’s all that matters.”

I knew he was right; after all, wher­ever Hubby is will always be home. Yet I still couldn’t shake the feel­ing that I would be mov­ing back to those same emo­tional ties and mem­o­ries that I had left behind. To be hon­est, it felt more like I’d be mov­ing back to even more emo­tional mem­o­ries, espe­cially since I had lost my father less than 9 months prior. How would it feel to go home again? To see all the places I had been to while in the throws of Infer­til­ity treat­ments? To see fam­ily and friends again, many who still to this day ask us why we don’t have kids? To know that I had failed to give my par­ents … my Dad espe­cially … any grand­chil­dren? To know that the only grand­child my Mom has lives a thou­sand miles away?

I reflected on all these thoughts on the long drive east on I-​​94. As Hubby fol­lowed behind me in the Penske truck, I could feel myself slowly sink­ing into the deep abyss. After all, 2011 was sup­posed to be less emo­tion­ally stress­ful than last year … Espe­cially since 2010 was far from stel­lar. Noth­ing could pos­si­bly top the year I got fired, dealt with another preg­nancy in the fam­ily (this time much bet­ter than in 2008), took my career in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and unex­pect­edly lost my Dad (and not to men­tion a beloved fur baby within the same week).

But as easy as it would be to let the abyss swal­low me whole, I knew I had to find the pos­i­tives amongst all the neg­a­tive. So while lis­ten­ing to the entire INXS back cat­a­logue I tried to reflect on what Hubby & I accom­plished in the short time we lived in the Windy City.

“We made it to Chicago,” I thought, know­ing that we had always talked about mov­ing there since our days in col­lege. As much as we loved the Detroit area, we wanted to expe­ri­ence true urban living.

“We mas­tered pub­lic trans­porta­tion.” I added that to list, know­ing full well that grow­ing up in the Motor City pretty much meant that every­one drove them­selves around in their cars rather than uti­lize pub­lic transportation.

“Learned more about Chicago than just the Mag­nif­i­cent.” I chuck­led at that one, since we loved head­ing into the var­i­ous neigh­bor­hoods and explor­ing the intri­ca­cies of the city.

“Spent more time with my Chicago cousins,” I thought; grate­ful for this fact, espe­cially since these were my Dad’s nieces … and none of us ever expected that Dad would be taken from all of us so quickly.

Then as my thoughts turned to fam­ily, I remem­bered the biggest pos­i­tive that came out of Hubby’s and my short stint in Chicago. Of all the things that hap­pened while we were liv­ing in this “Sec­ond City,” I had actu­ally accom­plished the one thing that I had set out to do when we first decided to move out of our home­town. We had finally sep­a­rated our­selves from all the emo­tional bag­gage that came with Infer­til­ity and found our res­o­lu­tion to our jour­ney. And while it wasn’t the out­come that either of us had hoped for when we set out to start our fam­ily 14 years ago, it was one that the two of us could live with.

“So what if there are days — like today, for exam­ple — that I’d still feel like a fail­ure?,” I thought, as the sun finally began to set on that hot August evening. “At least we have each other.”

And all I could think of at that moment was Hubby’s words: “We’re together,” Hubby told me. “And really, that’s all that matters.”