My preteen is struggling. Hard. As most preteens are and have been since the beginning of time I imagine. It’s an awkward age of craving independence, thinking you know it all while actually not knowing much of anything and hormones raging and bodies changing and all the things. So my son is no different except he has this added layer of not having a father. And that is really fucking up his world. As I am more than likely also really fucking up his world. Because I do not have the answer to the question to “what is the point?” (which he very sadly asked last night after a rough day). I don’t know the point. To life. To living. To any of it. I have my ideas, obviously. But do any of us know the real point? According to the innerweb the point to being alive “enhances our ability to empathize. It allows us to connect and support others because of our good and bad experiences and how other people, family, and friends stood for us in difficult situations and circumstances.” Ummmm cool. Super helpful. Pretty sure that wasn’t the answer he was seeking. Nor the answer I gave.

I was taken aback for a good minute when those words left his mouth. Because the truth is, these days (or any days for that matter), I don’t know the point. Because life is HARD. AS. FUCK. All the time. And we are beyond blessed with our people, love, we don’t have financial struggles, we are always well fed (well, we are always fed, at least), we do fun things, we go new places, we have a roof over our heads, most of our living necessities are met (technically I guess all of them are met?). On the outside looking in, we should be the hap-hap-happiest assholes since Bing Crosby tap danced with Danny fucking Kaye. But on the inside, we have 12 year olds asking the whole point to existence, to his existence. As if he doesn’t want to be here. And I stumbled through some bullshit (maybe it’s bullshit, maybe it’s not) about how we only get one life and our job is to live it – to help others when we can, to love wholly and honestly, to do our best, to laugh when it’s funny, cry when it hurts and just keep swimming (I just stole a lot of lines from a lot of different things). Because, as we know all too well, life can change and/or end in the blink of an eye. And it’s hard not to wonder what the point is.

My son is struggling to find the joy. The things he used to find happiness in (mostly sports – playing them, watching them, memorizing any and all statistics that he could spout off at any given moment – whether one has asked or not) are no longer doing the trick. And my boy, he’s a serious fellow, too mature for his young age, an old soul if you will, so you wouldn’t necessarily think he was finding joy in any of those things if you were to watch him. He’s always been extremely hard on himself, always expecting perfection out of every little thing. Which is him but also a product of the failures of Ash and I when Ash was alive. Because before Ash got sick, we were super hard on our boy. And we fucked that up. But we were adults when Ash got sick (obviously) and we knew we had to change, we knew we were fucking up. We knew how finite and fragile life was and that what we were focusing on was very, very, very unimportant. But we were also molding this tiny little mind into thinking that perfection is attainable. News flash – it’s not. Nor would we want it to be. It’s in the mistakes where we learn the most and grow the most and let’s be honest (or my truth anyway), laugh the most. (Side note – I’m being pretty forthcoming and (insert shudder here) vulnerable here, so keep your judgments to yourself if you don’t mind.) And I’m trying like hell to teach this to Jack, to show him how often I mess up, to laugh when I do and to readjust and try again. Is it sinking in? I don’t know. Sure as shit doesn’t seem like it.

I do know that he is struggling. And I am struggling to help him with his struggles. Because I don’t know the point. I don’t know why we’re here. I do know that it is hard to find the joy in life sometimes. And I do know that it is ok to be unhappy (not everything is sunshine and rainbows, there’s no such thing as perfect and sometimes life fucking sucks). I do know that 12 is a hard age whether you’ve lost a parent or not. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my boy will be ok, he will get through this and he will find moments of happiness and gratitude and truly living life along the way. I also know that I can’t do this alone so before you freak out at me and tell me we need some kind of professional intervention, just know that I’m already on it and also mind ya business. Just kidding – one must not mind their business when another one is putting their business out for the world to read, share, judge and commiserate with.

All we can do, in the words of Matthew McConaughey (that’s really hard to spell), is just keep living (JKL for short because apparently writing out words fully is really difficult these days – insert eye roll). But he’s not wrong. Just keep living. And don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive. (Yes, I stole that line also.)

And also, fuuuccccckkkkkkkkkkkk…