What makes it worse.

I don't have a job.

I haven't worked in two years. Granted, it was by choice during the first of those two years, and I put in enough hours during the five preceding years so that it all balances out pretty evenly overall. But still.

It wasn't supposed to be like that. Two years ago, I took a year-long leave of absence to come to Switzerland not only to confirm my suspicions that this one was indeed the one but also to see if this country was one in which I could live happily with him. It was a good break and it brought me the answers I was seeking, namely: yes. Yes, he is; yes, I could.

Accordingly, towards the end of the leave of absence, I gave my notice and never looked back. I sold my furniture and packed my most precious or most utilitarian possessions and said a lot of difficult goodbyes and prepared my resume. I thought I'd find something fairly easily here, perhaps not my dream job, but something decent and honest. I look great on paper. I get along well with others. What could be the problem?

Without getting into the details of just exactly what could be – and is – a problem (and it's not language – there are many international organizations here where the official language is English), I'll just leave it at: after being here over a year, I still don't have a job.

Gilles and I first talked about starting a family in the autumn of the year of my leave of absence. We're not exactly young and having children was, is, more important to us than career. But we decided that when I came back to Switzerland for good, late the following winter, we'd wait a little while. I'd get a job. It'd be better that way, to get a good start in a new position in a new country – and, oh yes, there's that little thing called federally mandated paid maternity leave. Might be nice.

So I arrived here, and I began looking and didn't find much in my line of work, and I looked again and submitted some resumes and got nothing in response, and submitted some more for positions that were even less appropriate for me and got less than nothing in response. I was falling into a black hole that sucked my time and my energy and, quite honestly, my sense of self-worth. My confidence. My happiness.

Finally we decided to let go of the idea that I'd have started to work before we started to try to start a family. My self-worth was still suffering. Nobody wanted me. Nobody cared. My nine years of higher education and three university diplomas and hundred grand in student loans and five years of beyond satisfactory job performance seemed to have been for nothing.

Everything changed when I saw that positive (those positives). I would have a raison d'être beyond my own selfish desires. I would finish nine more short months of joblessness and then I'd have a little life, my life's work, before me. Gilles told me he'd never seen me so happy, and I don't think I ever had, either. Obviously my happiness was not due solely to finding a solution, of sorts, to not having a job, but my immediate release from that particular depression definitely added to the joy of having a baby.

And then everything changed again, and the black hole became infinitely more powerful than it ever had been before.

One of the good things that has come out of this whole experience is that I'm no longer depressed about not having a job. I'm depressed about not having a baby. At least that's a more worthwhile endeavor.