The last several months have been more difficult than I anticipated. In many ways, I feel like I’m losing my ongoing struggle with depression. The continuous push and pull is stressful and exhausting — both emotionally and physically. The physical symptoms of depression — the ones you see commercials about — suck all of my energy and I feel happiest when I am being still. Even then, that happiness is short-lived. I fidget constantly.

I don’t want to, but I consistently think about what I thought 2015 would look like when we started the year with good news. A baby would be born in December. My birthday, along with many members of my family, is that same month. It would be joyous. Early in my pregnancy my husband commented that December would be the best month ever — the arrival of our child and the new Star Wars movie?! Pure perfection for him. It was wonderful for me to see him look forward to something given that he’s often in much physical pain because of chronic back problems.

Now, December is a month I don’t want to start. I’d like to fast-forward it. Knowing that I can’t sometimes fills me with dread. If I have to turn the page in the calendar, I’d like nothing more than to just stay in bed with my dog, hiding under the covers. No birthday. No Christmas. Just leave me be.

Therapy, thankfully, has been tremendously helpful in reminding me that I did lose something I wanted desperately and it’s okay to be sad about that. There’s no timeline for that grief. The pain demands to be felt and I need to make peace with that. Life has thrown a lot at me and my loved one (in forms other than my infertility) and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times.

Overwhelmed has been my natural state over the last few months. When one more thing happens I ask how much more I can take. Jobs, cancers, money… it has been one thing on top of another. I desperately need something for the win column. My husband hates when I talk like this — from such a place of negativity. What he has a difficult time seeing, of course, is that many days when I search, I find literally nothing else. I am self-aware enough to know that it’s the depression taking over, but it can be impossible to explain to sometime who isn’t there mentally just how powerful it is. It’s a monster.

Next month I’ll have a second surgery for two unexplained “spots” in my uterus. I’m scared, of course, about what those spots could be. But the small part of me that is still capable of being hopeful is, because, perhaps, what’s found in me could explain my otherwise unexplained infertility. At the tail end of an awful year, a diagnosis can point me in the right direction. The 10 percent left of me that can be positive wants to believe this surgery can bring about some clarity.

For now, I’ll do my best to refocus. I’m waiting on some non-fertility-related news this week that, if positive, could nudge the dominos to fall.