Married to Depression

The beginning, wedding bells.

It was a beautiful August day by the waterfalls in West Virginia. The state both of us grew up in and started dating in 1993. Should be the happiest day of a girls life, and it was pretty special don't get me wrong. Although it was not the start of a happily ever after even wearing a two thousand dollar dress shipped from Barcelona Spain.
There I was just 5 months shy of being twenty years old, still a child in most rights. I thought my life would be great, what could ever go wrong? I was marrying my best friends brother, my high school sweetheart, the boy everyone wanted to date but he chose me. He had just graduated college at WVU with a bachelor's degree and I had just graduated high school. He had jobs already lined up and many to chose from. I on the other hand had no no degree and not one pending in the future ether. There was no need for one, we decided early on that I would eventually be a stay at home mother and housewife. He had chosen a good promising job in Oakland Md. We would be moving over an hour away from where we both grew up in WV. This was a good thing for us!
My husband had decided early on that when the time came for us to have children he didn't want to live close to family. He wanted to be able to raise our children the way we wanted to without influences from family. His childhood from the age of 8 had been in a broken home with a father that was very absent most of his life. It was a very tough situation with his father who didn't want to ever see his mother after their divorce. It had been a burden just doing seating arrangements at our wedding. Not the best situation for us as a couple or for my husband.
We didn't imagine that just a little over 2 years living in our dream area with dreams jobs that I would become pregnant with our first child. Being pregnant wasn't a huge surprise. We had been trying but told it could take a while since I had been on birth control the last 5 years of my life. Everything was going great. So we thought, little did we know that my husbands job was turning out to be too stressful and unethical for him to pursue down that path with this particular company he had chosen to work for.  Before I knew it he was looking at jobs all over the US. At around 3 months pregnant my husband flew to Texas for an interview to work for the state working at Texas Forestry Service. Before accepting the job we had to make sure that I would immediately have insurance and able to see an OBGYN. Everything was going perfect and being excited is an understatement!
I was so excited to get out of the Maryland cold and snow and be in Texas where the weather was warm and we would be close to Galveston beach! This was going to be great right? I could already see myself sitting on a porch rocking my new baby, drinking sweet iced tea! Not so fast, be careful what you wish and pray for! The Texas I imagined was not at all what I got. It was hot beyond belief, muggy, and humid! We made it to Lumberton Tx with the help of my father and Rich's childhood friend and best man of our wedding. We brought with us our dog Ko-dee, his truck, my car, and very little furniture. Our apartment complex was super nice and included a pool! Beat this Texas heat in the pool! Despite the fact that we left in 4 feet of snow in Maryland in February we arrived in sunny warm Texas in March! It wasn't so bad. It definitely wasn't the house and porch with rocking chair I had dreamt of but it was cute and things were looking nice.
My dad ended up staying down here with us until the baby was born in July. He had been such a big help to us. He had driven home back to West Virginia to take our friend back then drove back down a few weeks later.