Sunday, January 1, 2017

Getting Back to It...Take Two





    I woke up with an itch a few days ago to start writing again. Since I last left off so very much has happened...happy, messy, crazy life, with a touch of widow thrown in for that extra special dash of crazy.

I am in a fully realized, fully committed relationship (aka I'm engaged).
We own a house together.
We fight.
We love hard.
My kids make me want to throw things.
In my life, the kids have what we refer to as "first daddy" and "second daddy".
We are total nerds for things, but not all the same things, which makes for some pretty interesting conversations.
I graduated college (well, community college) with an AA in Psychology.
I'm a semester away from graduating with a BA in Psychology.
I've applied to grad school.

Confession:
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO SCARED IN ALL MY LIFE.

There are so many unknowns out there for me. I know, I know, I sound like a spoiled millennial who has never adulted before. But seriously, at my age (which is more Gen X than millennial), having started my WHOLE life over, this shit is SCARY.

I will graduate in approximately four months and haven't been able to hold a job in 7 years. I have no idea what kind of a job I should get, if I should do grad school full time, or if I should take a gap year and get a job. I can't make a decision if my life depended on it. I have an idea how to adult, but, to date, have never done so successfully. At this point, I'm lucky my kids aren't eating the leftover french fries out of the back seat of the car and calling it dinner.

On top of full time life, full time kids, and full time school, my kids are EXTRAORDINARILY busy. L is the jock of the fam, and we are at some sort of sports practice at least twice a week, every week. D has a very active social life, on top of being autistic, so our lives are filled with after school activities, social skills therapy, regular therapy, medication management appointments, and one-on-one time to stave off meltdowns and the like.

Then there's good old crazy me. With all my widow brain (forgetting even the simplest of tasks), ADHD (literally), perfectionism, school work study, school activities (like program chair for a mental health group on campus), anxiety (over just about everything that involves getting out of bed), and generally being angry about having to do the widow thing in general, I am sure I am just a joy to have to deal with.

So, enough about me and my starting over.....what have you done when faced with unimaginable life choices and no road map?