Funny, this is my first post in over a year. Funnier still, I started this post about 3 weeks ago, and am just now finishing it off. But I think that tells you a lot about my life right now: NEVER “stable”, “safe” or “predictable”.

I have been dealing with depression over the past few months, some of it created from reasons I am not going to get into here, and some of it from past trauma that I am still trying to overcome. I am not a naturally depressed person. My normal state is happy and interested, but this time I have really been hit hard with overwhelming feelings of being caught in a whirlpool with no entrance and no exit. Thinking I just needed some rest, I have spent the last month really trying hard to organize my life. I know I feel better when I feel like I have control, so that is what I have been trying to regain.

The good news is that I think its working. By making sure that every bobby pin I own is attached to the magnetic strip in my bathroom drawer, I have actually started to feel better. Well, I don’t know that that did it, but by controlling what I can and accepting what I can’t control, I feel like I have REGAINED control… Wow, that’s a weird sentence. But it’s true.

In general, I think its really dumb to say you have control of toddlers. The truth is that they have control of you. You are on their schedule, cleaning up after their spills, making sure they are fed and clean. This is not something you think about or envision when you think about the joy of parenthood, but none-the-less it becomes the reality.

Marriage is the same thing, sort of. At least for me it is. His emotions, his schedule, all that controls my schedule because of the piece of paper that was signed by the Hamilton County clerk and our minister.

I am not going to lie to you and tell you that my life is perfect or that I love every minute of it. The last 2 months have proven to me just the opposite. I can feel like I have everything a person would want, but yet I can feel empty, alone and like I want to escape it all.

Whether or not this is my new year’s challenge post is up for debate. I think one of my main challenges for myself this year is to try to find happy again. I am working on it. But knowing that the end to finding happy is your eventual death makes it an exhausting task, because it will be a constant cycle of finding a new happy as you move through the stages of life. I am still trying to find it right now, but I think I am on my way.