2019 has not been kind to me.

This year started with a dreadful, snowy winter.

Erie is noted for the amount of snow that falls here during the winter season. Golden Snow Globes are often awarded to my hometown. That is the prize awarded to the city with a population of 100,000 or greater. Some people seem to get giddy about that sort of thing, but I have grown tired of the downside to that amount of frozen precipitation.

While we didn't win the award, we certainly got enough to keep me inside and pretty much isolated from much of the living, breathing real people that I associate with on a semi-regular basis. Depression and the loneliness of that season does take its toll. Some things, like the amount of drugs used to ease the boredom or break me out of a funk, does seem to increase .

The downside to that is sacrificing healthy and social activities that most healthy folks use to keep themselves...
Would it be correct to say that they are sane?

Then a rude surprise was placed at my feet at the end of May. The mother of my children, and a friend of mine for over 50 years suddenly passed away. She hopefully, passed peacefully in her sleep. It certain was a shock in that her, as well as many of my acquaintances expected I would be the first to check out.

There is a certain amount of karma or perhaps irony in the way she passed.

It was agreed that I would be the first and that some arrangement would be made for a respectful funeral and such would be taken care of...

Not going to happen now and I guess my remains may well end up in the pauper's cemetery. Oddly enough that cemetery is pretty close to the house I built a long time ago out in the burbs. That doesn't really matter but the hurt from her passing was exacerbated by the attitude of my children. They have pretty much erased me from their mother's and their existence. 

When I came to the viewing at the funeral home, I was encouraged to pay my respects to my former wife and friend, and leave in short order. While never said directly, I was encouraged through my sister and by other actions, to not attend the funeral service the following day.

That was a further salted by my son telling me that I was not allowed to visit the home and house I built. I was also told there would be no opportunity to retrieve any sort of memento of that friendship from the home.

No visit, no nothing...

As the summer passed, I found myself increasing my intake of drugs of all sorts. From my comfort substance, crack to crystal meth and even dabbling a bit with heroin. Not to lessen the effect on my that the combinations may have had on my physically, I also played with injecting both the meth and the skagg.

I have good veins and may have damaged my body to a certain degree by coming close to an abscess.  My hand and arm blew up, swollen from improperly trying to hit a vein and missing. And yes, that shit, the meth does burn like a motherfucker when you do miss.

In other news, in a few futile attempts to ease my loneliness, I have tried through various means to attract some female companionship. It also seems that my lack of practice, or perhaps my total inexperience, has resulted in some dreadfully clumsy mistakes. Apparently there were those who did think that activity was inappropriate.  I haven't unraveled that yet, but wonder why a person I have grown to trust and believed looked at me without judging had turned 180 degrees. Maybe I threatened something that made him feel somewhat superior. We are both anarchistic in our own charming ways, and that could be the root of it all. It might also be that...

Fuck if I know, but that will be a topic for further exploration down the road somewhere. The troubling part is that I thought that there were a very few people out there who did not consider me to be disposable.

Maybe it is the meth. As told to me a long time ago, this fellow told me that cocaine allowed him to walk through walls, but meth allowed him to walk through people.

More on that as I sort out the depressing mess that I probably created.