Dates.

Our Anniversary and L’s birthday are later this month. The date she died is 1st September.

This is coming up to end of year three and I suppose, start of year 4 – 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22.

Things are as they are.

I’m sole parent and I get my Friday and Sunday hours off and my respite weekends.

My mother and father in law continue to be fantastic in terms of the boys and helping us.

The dog is my main day to day companion and confidant.

No one stepped up, stepped in otherwise, even to give me some friendship or support.

I’ve learned to do things myself. Learned again about being on my own.

My text messages are usually from companies.

I’ve did swipey swipey again.

15 likes but no-one in my preferred range of 35 miles and no one in even a wider 30-60 age band.

Currently not using the widowed group Facebook groups after making a silly mistake in which group I posted something.

Still haven’t met the local groups.

My psychologist phone calls stopped as I thought I could access counselling from the charity for chartered surveyors. Turned out that fell apart as detailed financial information needed.

The ASN School’s outreach worker stopped visiting over a year ago as the programme withdrawn by school.

I’ve had autistic meltdowns with both schools in past year.

It’ll be my eighth season since I last regularly went to St Mirren games.

I think eight years since L moved out and our relationship fell apart.

For all that I can handle day to day parenting and everything else that needs doing, timewise, for myself, I have a couple of three/four hour blocks at weekends.

Really speaking it gets the dog out and I get to do grocery shopping without the kids.

I’ll have the return of schooldays with dog for company and I think my current attempts on swipey swipey apps are as doomed a previous ones.

Mood isn’t good, loneliness is difficult and often I just have an early night.

I can’t make things happen as I may like and it is tough at times to see any upside.

I can deflect attention from me to the boys, I can say to myself it’s not just about me, I can say I owe them whatever they need and as a parent, I try my best for them.

I’m 50 at end of year, I can then give up on looking at things like dating apps and just get down to the fundamentals of what I need to do to keep alive for as long as possible for the children’s sake.

I need the strip bare any thoughts of self or what I’d like in my life.

I will look at dog shelters to see if I can take on another dog, so I’m not alone in a few years time when he gets older and dies.

I will look at gyms and pools locally so I can exercise in the school day.

I’ll plan for our holiday next year, for Christmas and for the term on our current car ending.

Happiness is neither here nor there.

It’s important the kids are settled and okay and happy in their lives.

Hopefully L would approve of me prioritising them. Hopefully she’d understand that how I feel and what I have aren’t as important as them.

I need to work on putting away my hopes and wants. I need to settle with myself that it’s happened and chasing ‘a life’ isn’t for me anymore.

I need to accept that.

Dealing with the thoughts and memories around her birthday, our anniversary and the death date are going to be difficult. Inevitably.

I can’t pretend life as normal over those few weeks, although I do have the return to school things to work on.

There’s enough to do, no point in complaining, stuff needs sorting out and fixed.