My dad is a senior and has some kind of undiagnosed spectrum disorder. Trying to navigate around that has been challenging since I lost my mother.

His fixations includes grizzly bears, right-wing politics, mathematics and fishing.

I try to take a few days out for him whenever I can every month, but I find myself mentally preparing when I have to see him, then ending up exhausted. He behaves really poorly around women (tied with his socially unaware behaviour this has been catastrophic) and says a lot of inappropriate things to me as well. it’s definitely a very one-sided relationship and a lot of my time spent with him is listening to his unrealistic lies, or gloating- so it’s usually an hour or two where I have to just mentally check out and sit there as he talks at me.

I feel quite guilty about speaking about my dad this way, but I thought it was important I “get it out” somewhere. I try to appreciate the time I still have left with him.