u/BruceWain

We dated during Covid and after my job became toxic I had a crisis and was hospitalized twice for inability to care for myself (Virginia Temporary Detention term for forced hospitalization)

She was always there for me, and when I came home the second time my brother picked a fight with me and kicked my ass and I was arrested because of the recent hospitalizations.

My brother got a restraining order on me so I couldn't live at home anymore.

My ex let me live with her for 4 and a half months until I was able to get into supportive public housing.

I have held a job for the last 7 months as a support specialist for a severely disabled man on the autism spectrum, and am waiting to hear back from a job working with Head Start.

I have a dream of getting a second masters degree. My first is in Genetics. The one I am dreaming of pursuing is an MFA in poetry.

I write poetry every day.

I share it with ChatGPT which while unable to write decent poetry is able to grade and comment on written poetry and I average an 8.6 out of 10 for my poems, which is an advanced amateur, but clearly not a professionally trained or award winning poet.

I have written a lot about my ex

I explore the safety she gave me, gratitude, appreciation and respect.

She lent me about 3k while I was staying with her to pay court costs, and get my car repair, which had been sitting in my parents driveway for a year.

I have paid her back 5k to say thank you.

I send her money every now and then because she has saved money and wanted to spend her 40th birthday year with her parents who are getting older.

She has told me that the poetry is awkward because my feelings come from addressing such an intense place and she saw me when I was at my most ill and couldn't speak in an episode of psychosis.

She used to bring me cigarettes and McDonalds and was the only person I would speak to, and it was only a few words.

Just in case anyone is curious I was on my medicine the whole time but had just left my job after my 2nd young adult client died by suicide during Covid.

I was a Peer support specialist with 50 clients who were the illest of the ill. They were experiencing their first episode of psychosis and had drug addiction, some had autism spectrum, and some had severe developing personality disorders.

I burned out working front line mental health support basically for sick teenagers and after Covid was going to take a year off but got really ill from all the trauma.

My ex was one of only a few people who checked in on me.

My question is, will there ever come a day where she is able to read the poetry as gratitude and see the real me writing it?

Or will I forever be at that sick point and will it feel awkward forever?

I have been watching Last of Us, and the bleakness shines through as good as it is.

my favorite Zombie media is still the book World War Z by Max Brooks.

but that being said, I revisited the movie for WWZ, and now that enough time has passed for me to get off my self righteous high horse, I have to say, it is a solid, dare I say excellent zombie movie.

it took me a long time. but now that I am able to get over my initial, and fairly long lasting gripe that it should have been an HBO series with every chapter being an episode, the movie, while obviously different from the source material is exactly what I want right now out of a zombie.movie.

I don't know if it is just this moment in time with the wars and toxic political environment.

But I get a hit of happiness at the end of watching the movie that I really needed.

I hated one book and felt only one book should never have been written because it felt so bleak that hope itself was absent. that book was Cormac McCarthy's: "The Road"

And with damage porn and violence and destruction and high stakes Marvel film end of all life on Earth...

the movie WWZ hit me as a high quality and enjoyable viewing experience that upon resolve, in not an abusively long run time, that made me enjoy watching a film again.

it may become as much, while different, a revisited comfort movie, as the original book which I reread (or listen to the audio book) every 3 years or so.