This is gonna be long, so I apologize. These past few months have been really, really hard. I used to pride myself on my ability to be strong and tough through hard, high stress times. I was the one who thrived in those moments... I worked two jobs, went to school and graduated with honors. I put immense pressure on myself to succeed and it has worked for the most part.

But these last few months/year has been especially bad. I got through moving to a new state. I got through being unemployed for a while and am now at a great job that I love. I got through my mother's cancer diagnosis (caught it early, treatment was successful...her scans have been clear for the last 6 months). Then shit really hit the fan.

I'm not close with the majority of my family. Aside from my mom, I'm really only close to two aunts. One of the two got diagnosed with very advanced cancer shortly after my mom did. Her cancer had spread to her brain, and without being there to see the changes, no one really saw what was happening until it was too late. The first big clue that something was wrong was when she met and married a man within a span of a week. This is the woman who was cohabitating with my uncle for 20 years before they got married. The woman who has been thinking about putting in a back porch for years but can't quite seem to find the right contractor. Allllways looks before she leaps.

Well, the deed was done and she didn't tell a soul of her friends or family until after the fact. Then I met the man and it all started making sense. He couldn't possibly be more slimy. My aunt was wife #7 for him. Some died. Some divorced him. One tried to shoot him. He's a bigot and a racist, which then isolated my aunt from her best friend of 30 years who was her black neighbor. He moved her into his home and was putting a lot of pressure on her to sell hers, but thankfully she didn't.

After about two months of marriage, aunt Debbie started having symptoms she thought was a stroke. Husband wouldn't take her to the hospital. Kept telling her she was crazy even though she was having trouble walking and couldn't grasp the buttons on her shirt. Aunt Debbie called her friend Donna who works in home healthcare to get a second opinion and she said call an ambulance immediately. All the while, husband in the background is yelling at her saying she needs a psychiatrist, not a doctor. Don't listen to Donna, etc. Again, thankfully, aunt Debbie doesn't listen. She called an ambulance and the scans showed not a stroke but 22 brain tumors and massive brain swelling that we're impacting her motor skills and, not surprisingly, her personality/decision making skills.

She was in the hospital for several weeks, during which time she got the swelling under control and the tumors radiated so they shrunk in size and reduced pressure on some pieces. Her personal started to come back as husband's colors really started to shine. To make a long story slightly shorter, he made it very clear he was after her widow money and was trying to isolate her/manipulate her away from me and the family who loves her. That bond was too strong and she stood firm in that if he made her choose, she would choose me. He got very upset, said a lot of hateful things to me, and left. The hospital was informed that he wasn't welcome to come back, but he never tried. He also never tried contacting her after she was discharged. Right up through her cancer battle and when she ultimately passed last Sunday.

While she was undergoing treatment is when I met my child's father. We had a brief but charged affair of sorts that culminated in my nugget. Baby's father was not willing to actually be a father and has since opted out. It's lonely, but we'll be fine.

My aunt lived in Virginia. Virginia has some stupid ass family laws. She wasn't eligible to file for annulment despite what had happened or her illness. She couldn't file for divorce until she had been separated for 6 months, but her separation isn't considered a legal separation because it only matters if she was married or not married at the time of her death. That makes her husband the legal next of kin. Which means to have her cremated, we had to alert him to her death and he had to authorize it. We thought we had all her assets protected...we established a trust, changed all the beneficiaries on her accounts, etc. Come to find...VA also has this other stupid law where a husband can't be disinherited from a will. And if he is not "provided for" in said will, he can take what they call an elective share from her augmented estate. Since aunt Debbie couldn't have kids of her own, he believes he is owed half of everything my uncle David left my aunt when he passed. And he might have a point on that.

They lived as husband and wife for two months, after he conned her into marrying him. He made her feel unsafe, so she left. And she lived in fear that he would show up after and make her life hell, or worse, try to kill her. She was convinced he wanted her dead more than he ever wanted her alive, and yet, he's challenging my aunt's wishes to leave everything she had to her two nieces which were the closest to children she ever had. And Virginia law is gonna let him try, and he will, because one of the first things aunt Debbie told me about the man is that "he likes to sue people".

Here I am, now 22 weeks preggo and I've got an impending legal battle because some slimeball wants to take advantage of my sick and now dead aunt. I've been thankful for my nugget through this process because he reminds that some parts of life are still good and beautiful, and he's moving around more now and making his presence known, and I feel badly that I can't just be happier. I'm angry and sad all the time and it's not his fault. I just lost someone close to me and y'all know how preggo hormones are. Compounded by the protective mama bear instincts to let my aunt rest peacefully and see her wishes followed through and see that he can't ruin her death the way he tried to ruin her life.

I really feel like I deserve some kind of break, but the hits just keep coming. Can the universe just leave me alone and let me enjoy the fact that I'm pregnant after years of thinking I would never be able to have children? Please? Just let me be happy for SOME of the time he's growing in there.

OK, end rant. Thanks for listening and any words of advice or encouragement.