I'm 38, I lost my spouse to cancer 2 years and 3 months ago this Sunday. He passed at 44 after a 6 year plus battle with CRC and eventually spread to liver lungs gallbladder, and I held him until his final breath. The last six or eight months I literally was going 24/7 and it's taking this long just to try to put on enough of a mask to try to people. I've tried two jobs I just don't fit at, I actually care about my patients and they're not just dollar signs to me so I recently lost my job after our town was devastated by hurricane helene. I also had a hysterectomy back in June so I feel like I've literally lost almost everything about myself. My husband was so sick for so long by the time (10 months AD) SO ALMOST 18 MONTHS I went without physical intimacy. I'm absolutely in the sexual pime of My Life and in many of the hard talks that we had together before he passed he expressed to me that he wanted me to be happy and move on and use my experience and heart to help others. What gets me through these horrible lonely Friday nights is imagining that he's sitting in a dimly lake karaoke bar in heaven, think like a Roadhouse, wearing a werewolf mask and furry paws and singing werewolves of London patiently waiting for us to join him. Does it ever get any better? Has all of this loss created a vacuous black hole of kinky desire? I know my spouse would be cheering me on and would even be a bit jealous but would tell me to keep pushing forward. Thank you for listening . Gotta tame in that fire somehow and at least we can all remember what Miley said, we can buy ourselves flowers.