The irony doesn’t escape me. It’s 5:15 am and –thanks to our dog — who refuses to sleep, I’m wide awake.

It’s not as if I’ve had a dif­fi­cult time falling asleep … it’s more that I can’t seem to stay asleep. If any­thing, all I want to do is climb under the cov­ers and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Depres­sion can obvi­ously do that.

And with me, depres­sion can cause waves and waves of anx­i­ety, which only add fuel to the insomnia-​​fire.

Recently Hubby and I had one of our long dis­cus­sions (one of many we’ve been hav­ing lately). This one hap­pened to start off with an inno­cent com­ment our 15-​​year old nephew had said last Sun­day when we met them for lunch.

“Aun­tie,” he told me, “you look sad” . And I couldn’t tell him any dif­fer­ently, other than to say that I’d been tired a lot lately.

My hus­band brought that up dur­ing our dis­cus­sion as a means to show me how even a 15-​​year old could see my depres­sion. And if he could see it, how many other peo­ple would see it as well?

All I know is that over the years, I have changed. Oh … I think the heart of me — my cen­ter — will never change, but the way I’ve looked at things or approach things have def­i­nitely been altered from my life experiences.

I know these thoughts are no dif­fer­ent than any other per­son in their late 30’s/early 40’s. After all, isn’t this when we begin to look back at our lives to where we were and com­pare them to where we are now? Isn’t this where we reflect back on those dreams we had in our early 20’s and think about whether we’ve achieved them or not?

You see, as I approach 40 this year, this is one of the anxiety-​​ridden things I think about fre­quently. I think about our early post-​​college years where then-​​fiancé and I would dream about our future together. We’d dream about our mar­ried life together; of kids and the large house in the sub­urbs. We’d talk about how our kids would be into sports or some sort of activ­i­ties where we would be the proud par­ents who’d show up with video cams in hand to record such moments. We talked about vaca­tions as families.

And, of course, I also had my dream of want­ing to be a Stay-​​At-​​Home-​​Mom for a spell, while wait­ing for our four (yes, four) kids to all be old enough to go to school. I also dreamt about mak­ing friends with other Mom’s; friends of our kids, where we could hang out and com­mis­er­ate about daily life with kids. I dreamed of arrang­ing play­dates and birth­day par­ties and all these won­der­ful things I could do when I became a mother.

But we all know where those dreams went. Our best laid plans … right down the potty.

While mak­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free has less­ened the “blow” to my need to mater­nal­ize (is that even a word?), it hasn’t taken away the fact that I have had to face the “Boule­vard of Bro­ken Dreams” when com­ing to terms with my infertility.

In other words, in order to fig­ure out what our next step in child-​​rearing would be … Hubby & I had to walk that “boule­vard” alone. Together, yes def­i­nitely … but alone.

So now that the we’ve passed that boule­vard … and even though it’s been almost two years now … what do we do now? What’s our next step? What’s our goal? I know that chil­dren aren’t in our future, but so what is our new future?

It’s all of those wor­ries that keep me from hav­ing a full night’s sleep. It’s what causes me anx­i­ety in the mid­dle of the night.

Which direc­tion in life do we need to be head­ing? What we can do with our lives now that we’re clos­ing in on 40 … the decade where we should feel more “set­tled” in our lives?

It has all the mak­ings of a dream­less night. A night where I’m not sure what our new dream is going to be.

Which, again. The irony doesn’t escape me.