What a long, strange trip it has been. 

So many things have changed since last I wrote here. So many things. I've become a single father at the ripe young age of 48. That's.....interesting. Not by choice or by divorce, but becoming a widower. For more than a year I watched my wife and partner of 15 years slowly succumb to leukemia. A year of hospitals stays, trips to Portland, hotels, and failed treatments. It was well and truly exhausting for everyone and some days I'm not sure how I made it through. We lost her December 3rd this year. 43 years old and taken by fuckin leukemia. Who would ever have imagined? I now more about that disease than I ever wanted to. So here I am, a single parent. Huh. WTF?

Now what I'm trying to figure out is just what the hell do I do? The last two years have not been kind to my body or my mind. Gained back a lot of the weight I managed to lose. Road trips, hospitals, and hotels are not kind to the waistline. Not at all. Nor is stress. Food has always been one of my vices when stressed out. So we're working on that again. Food was always her thing too and hey, when you're slowly dying why not have that cake? Except I had it too. 

And I have no idea where I'm going with this. Maybe it's just a written pity party, I haven't really had one of those yet. I've spent the last 6 months keeping it together for the kids. Or at least trying to. I do my best to insulate them from the issues and the stress but I know it comes through in my attitude, I know they can tell. But what do you do? I don't know. No clue. That's what I'm realizing more and more lately, I just have no clue. Read this blog, I'm a mess, always have been. I struggle just keeping myself together and now I'm responsible for my kids too, without help. Not sure how to deal with that. 

Sometimes it's so very strange. Our relationship was a constant struggle for the both of us. Communication was a huge issue. She would become passive aggressive and I just became passive. It wasn't healthy for any of us and had leukemia not happened I'm not sure how much longer it would have lasted, probably not long. But that's so much different than having the mother of your children die. Especially for them. There's no visitation, there's no long weekends or summers, there's just loss. A void for them I can not fill. And I have no idea how to help with them that. Anyone that knows us well, I mean really well, knows she wasn't exactly the greatest parent. But she was Mom. Sure, her education and her job always came first but she was here, ish. And now she's not. They boy rarely talks about her or shows emotions, a thing I understand all too well, but it does come out. The daughter, she's an absolute mess. Resentment for many reasons, loss for obvious ones, no mom here to help her with all those teenage girl things dad simply won't or can't understand. It's very strange. I try. I really try. But it's a hole I can never fill for them. 

So here I am, 48 years old, unemployed, on disability, and suddenly a single parent. Now what? Real question. Now what do I do? I've been stuck in survival mode most of my life and here I am yet again. It's not living, it's existing. Barely. And I'm really, really tired of. I hear and read all the typical cliches but that's exactly what they are. What do you do when you haven't worked outside the home in years? When you really don't have any marketable skills? When your free time is limited to basically school hours because you're responsible for an autistic 8 year old and a 15 year old that may be too? How to you make changes when you're well and truly stuck? That's what I'm trying to figure out. What now? Because this long strange trip apparently isn't over for me quite yet and I have no idea where or when the next stop is. And that's exhausting.