my journey through an unwelcome hell

Starting with July of 2023 through December 2025, I had the worst experiences of my life. Frankly, I don’t know how I survived. Well, that’s not true. I survived due to dear family members, therapy and incredibly supportive friends and a renewed faith in God. I experienced the end of a 40-year relationship with a woman who I still love dearly. I went through prostate cancer and was blessedly cured with only fatigue as a result of the treatment. I was drawn to a group of men at St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Ramsey. I now am a lector and look forward to every mass and meeting I attend with the men's group. We also get to cook for the hungry, which brings me a bit of self-esteem. My therapist has helped me get over the feeling of having been a failure. I went through 2 and 1/2 years of estrangement from my youngest son & his wife. I was not included in the birth of his child in April of 2025. I listened as I was accused of something from them that was not true, but they were convinced it was. I prayed everyday and I worked hard to stop from crying as I thought of the person I love and how the last years of my life will not be shared with her. How what I had envisioned for the last years of my life was now not possible. How I had worked hard to achieve financial independence in my retirement and now I have incurred debt. How I fought to borrow enough money to buy the house I had lived in that contained my recording studio and succeeded. How during the first year of paying a mortgage again, major appliances broke and needed replacement in the house and how my credit card debt swelled to a frightening level. How by having to change from my previous joint bank accounts to one that is solely mine caused me not to get paid from my clients for 4 months due to crazy accountants sending me form after form and having to figure out the different ways they wanted me to sign specific documents. Several were with e-signatures, another couple with a "wet signature" and the final two with docusign. To this day, I still have not been paid for work I have done for a major corporation over 100 days since the invoices were sent. With all of this piled up on me, with the great suport group around me and my passion for music, I have managed to not only survive, but on a few occasions found a bit of happiness. I have declared 2026 the "year of Dan." I hope that you do the same for yourself. You deserve it.