Like the snow in Metro Detroit, I’ve been in and out of every­day life. And like the snow, my mind should be ever present dur­ing this par­tic­u­lar month, since it’s sup­posed to be the month of new begin­nings; of mak­ing res­o­lu­tions to change things.

But like the snow, I’ve only sur­faced in bits in pieces when­ever life seems to be most inconvenient.

This depres­sion sucks.

No. I mean lit­er­ally. It sucks the life and energy out of me. And throw in a (un)healthy dose of anx­i­ety with it … well it just makes life all the more interesting.

I’m try­ing my best to move past this depres­sion; doing all that I can phys­i­cally and clin­i­cally do, but the weight of this sad­ness seems to be omnipresent.

Thank God for an under­stand­ing Hus­band; one who has stood by me through thick and thin. He’s been there through the low-​​hanging, non-​​anxiety moments and all the way through the high-​​octane drama-​​fueled moments. Some­times I won­der – scratch that – I always won­der how I’ve man­aged to find my soul­mate and my best friend who still loves me despite all the bag­gage I carry.

If any­thing, Hubby (and the furkids – although the fur-​​dog has been on my last nerve lately … ) is the rea­son why I keep get­ting out of bed every morning.

Even though I’ve writ­ten the occa­sional post about the grief I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing, I know I’m not usu­ally so out­right with my depres­sion. But it has been sug­gested to me that I start writ­ing more about it, because this seems to be the only out­let where I can openly talk about my struggles.

And although this blog is (and always will be) about liv­ing child-​​free after infer­til­ity, I thought that this was my lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse where I can tell you about my life, both good and bad. So here’s where I lay it out on the line:

• I’m still griev­ing over the death of my father. Between my two par­ents, it’s become appar­ent to me over the past year and a half that I truly was a “Daddy’s Girl.” I thrived in the moments when my Dad would play around with me and tease me. And there were the silly jokes the two of us would play on each other that only the two of us would get. And I miss those things horribly.

• In the same aspect, I real­ize how much dif­fer­ent my rela­tion­ship with my Mom has always been; par­tic­u­larly now that my Dad had passed. I’ve always known that we never had that “Mother-​​Daughter” bond that is con­stantly seen in movies and TV shows; we’re just two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And with­out Dad being there as a buffer, this rela­tion­ship has only inten­si­fied … and not always in a pos­i­tive way.

• Even though it’s been over a year since decid­ing to move back to Detroit, not a day goes by that I don’t miss liv­ing in Chicago. I miss the city and the atmos­phere. I miss the late night trips to Dim Sum or Korean BBQ with my cousins. I miss walking.

• But what I miss the most is that Chicago rep­re­sented a new life for me. A life where Hubby & I carved out a place for our­selves; where the two of us really started focus­ing on us as a “Fam­ily of Two.” And while I love my home­town and take pride in telling peo­ple that I’m from Detroit, I miss that part of our lives where we were just far enough from “home” where Hubby & I could be our own family.

• And finally … even though Hubby & I have decided that child-​​free liv­ing after infer­til­ity is our life, there are still those days where I worry about our future and what other things in our lives we can con­tribute to the greater good of our world. Will all I have to show at the end of my life is that I’ve worked hard for a liv­ing? That I loved my fam­ily and friends to the best capac­ity that I could? What about my legacy? What will I leave behind? And will I have made a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life? I know now that hav­ing kids won’t nec­es­sar­ily “sat­isfy” or pro­vide answers to all of those ques­tions, but hav­ing lost my Dad … and know­ing the per­son he was … this is some­thing that weighs heav­ily on mind.

I could prob­a­bly go on with more “issues” that seem to run end­lessly through my anxiety-​​ridden head, but these are the ones that are con­stantly in my stream of con­scious­ness. These are the things that keep me from doing the things I would nor­mally enjoy doing.

Like read­ing.

Or knit­ting.

Or tak­ing pictures.

Or writ­ing.

Or sim­ply watch­ing TV.

But I’m try­ing … at least I’ll try to work on the writ­ing bit.

And maybe Mother Nature will be kind enough to work on a mild win­ter for the rest of us.