So, it all started this pat summer. Right before I saw the comic "High School of The Dead", I started getting very, VERY nervous about zombies. I don't really know why (albeit the comic didn't help. At all.) and I know it's stupid. They're fictional, bogus, fairytales of imaginative thought: they're not real. And yet here I am, afraid out of my wits of the whole ordeal. In June of this year, 2010, I suffered a mental breakdown over this after I saw a nightmare where I had to shoot my neighbors puppy to keep the people in my apartment alive, then I had to shoot my two cats because they make some sounds too. I've done things from immersing myself in web info on how to prepare, watched Zombie Land, and talked endlessly with my friends on how we'd find a place to hide away in the event of an apocalypse. We have great plans on how they'd come and get me and my family and we'd hide away in costco or safeway or the walgreens one of my friends works at until the whole thing blew over. I also watched cute viral videos, \ anime series like Neon Genesis Evangelion and K-On, and found way too much Hatsune Miku music to distract me from the silly slight bump in my fear set.

It's not that I'm afraid of zombies, persay. Rather, it's the dread of needing to do horrible, inhumane things in order to survive, and to watch the people you know and love be attacked and hurt, like watching a fast approaching death that you can (still) do nothing about. How are we to just pretend that they weren't our loved one, alive and well, just a minute ago? How can we take whatever blunt object to their head, full swing, knowing and remembering all the times you've shared with them, the memories you have? And how about our beloved pets, our yippy little pup who barks for affection all the time? Our meowy little cat who begs for food and to be let go of? In a zombie outbreak, unless they somehow learned "SHUT UP!" as command for "be quiet", they have to go away from you so you and whoever you're with can survive. (Also, this article didn't help.)

Since my breakdown this past summer, I've had a zombie night mare at least once a week. For a while, they were vague. They were things like running from a pack of them in the streets some where, where I knew I was still safe, weapon loaded in my hand. In my next nightmare, I lost the weapon. Then they got closer. Then the scenes became familiar. Then the scenes became closer to home. Then I had to run inside my apartment. Then I had to run to my family's car. Then I started recognizing the faces as people I knew in my neighborhood. It was all peachy until the zombies finally reached me.

In last week's nightmare, I was running with my best guy friend, who will go under the assumed name Gandalf. He has a slight paranoia of zombies as well, and it's very likely that I somehow got this from him. So here we are, the two of us, running in an abandoned parking building to try to take a shortcut to somewhere when the apocalypse hit. We had to make a quick second decision; run forward through the sparse crowd, or run up the stairs? I called the stairs but he begged to go forward. The adrenaline was rushing through my heart and in my ears, not even listening to his pleas, I bolted up the stairs. Two flights up we run into two guys, around our age, being followed. I open the doorway to see if we can get out of the stairwell to see a few right outside the door. The doom scenario: we're trapped. "What do I do?" is running through my head, and before I finish asking myself, I hear the primal scream of Gandalf from behind me. All I did was turn my back for half a second, one measly blink of an eye, and he's attacked by the one who was behind the door we were trying to shut again. More primal screams and I hear the two guys who were coming down the stairs scream this blood curdling scream. Here I am, in the middle of all this scream. Without a word or nothing, my instincts bolt my up the stairs again, through the pack now gorging off the still fighting bodies of the two guys. I woke up while ducking and crouching low, running through the pack, blood spilling down on my back, never blinking, never looking back.

I was terrified when I woke up. I felt that I lost and failed Gandalf forever, that maybe if I'd have listened to him in the first place, he would've still been with me in my dream. I was shaking, heart beating, breathing faint, like I was trying to hide quietly from the already here invasion.

I recovered from my dream in a few days, feeling better after having met Gandalf in person on campus. One of my friends even sent me a link to an article that gives reasons as to why the apocalypse can't happen. I felt jolly and great, superficially able to convince myself (again) there was no real threat to the safety of my friends and family, and that there never was any to begin with. Then I saw another nightmare that took place here at home.

My recollection of my dream starts from me hiding in the bathroom along with a few fugitives who have been injured. I couldn't exactly just kick them out into the hall way, I think my building had been sealed. Somehow they escaped from confinement and ran through my house to where my father was hiding, protecting my sisters and mother. I heard fighting, another cry of a fallen member, and then silence. My father came running to the bathroom, pale, brushing me aside, still shaking, holding a sharp opened scissor in my tightly clenched right hand. My stomach churns as I see the small graze on my father's neck, exposing his pink under flesh, with just a few drops of fresh blood starting to leak out. It was just a small graze. The fugitives weren't even zombies yet, just turning sick. I'm convincing myself over and over that there is no way in hell that my dad would be the first to go. He was invincible in my eye, always has been. Black belt in Kenpo, taught in a friend's dojo, always picking and winning fights with punk back when he first landed in the states. He's the owner of our family restaurant, where every knows him as the lovable joking chef, the icon of our restaurant. Hell, people come from as far as 500 miles away every month just to get to eat his food and talk to him. Yea, our restaurant is that good. And yet, despite all of this, all of these achievements, here he is, slumped on our bathroom floor of our tiny apartment, skin turning a sickly pale, a thick ring of dark forming around his eyes, panting getting sporadic. I sob quietly next to him, thinking this can't be real, he's my invincible father! I sobbed ever more, knowing that if he was to turn, I would have to stop him. My mother is too emotional and both of my sisters are physically weak; I was the only one who could possibly muster up enough courage and strength to end my father's misery. Still unable to find the courage, looking at my fallen father, I woke up.

As I write this entry, I have tears streaming down my face. I don't know how I can get over this paranoia that has somehow lodged itself deep in my brain. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this to be honest, I think I want to share my very real fear of a very unreal threat. I know cracked.com is a biased website, but they've got a hell of a way to back up their stories with real journalism. It really doesn't help my paranoia that they write about possible ways the apocalypse can start either. My fear isn't really about the zombies, it's about what would happen to the people we love.

I am afraid. And I need help.