Zombie Love

Anxiety bubbles through my blood like mucus in a sickeningly feverish,viscous way, worms its way into my belly and intestines, flutters up against my insides gaining possession of the dark secret twists and crevaces. Anxiety is the insidious, invisible smoke that fills the spaces in my lungs with its poison, makes my breath quick, makes my heart pound.  It filters up through the pores of my skin and stands my hair on edge.  It  makes me tremble. At its worst it snakes its way up through my neck, wraps itself around my brain stem and squeezes with its evil coils until I am one of the walking dead, awake but frozen in its clutches. 

Anxiety makes me a stinking zombie.  It makes me hungry and needy and clingy.  I seek reassurance constantly.  There is a loop that plays over and over in my pulverized, putrid brain driving me, against my will, to live time and again through words and actions that have frightened me or that hurt me, and shreds those encounters into a kind of human pulled-pork sandwich that floats in a sauce of bitter, salty tears.  I lurch uncertainly toward the one who hurts me for the reassurance of love, and of course, this individual runs madly away.  Just like you would if a zombie came after you.  No one wants an effing zombie.

I am a sad, pitiful zombie because there is a tiny piece of my mind that remains sentient...a cell or two that form a small, spongey chunk in the grey brain soup, but that awareness isn't strong enough to contain the anxiety that poisons my system and rots me from the inside out. 

There is a tiny, efforvescent bubble of optimism in this horror movie of my life, even though zombies rarely act on their own behalf. There are fleeting moments of zombie hope, when the infection that is anxiety wanes ever so slightly from its purient purpose.  When that happens I see flickers of fleeting dreams:  life without drama, without anxiety, without alcohol.  I see a silent movie of my life without my 66 year old Viet Nam veteran boy friend who is terrified of zombies,  is crippled by the guilt of being able to love and be alive when all of his comrades are long dead, and who refuses to face his alcoholism, his escapism, and his corrupted, embittered daughter--dependant on an alcoholic father her whole life, unable to express her anger in any reasonable or moderate way. This boyfriend is not a man who can deal humanely with a zombie. 

In this cinematic short, for just a moment, I am alone.  I am better off.  There is an easing of the hunger and the terrible need. I can breathe.  Then the loop kicks in again...anxiety builds...I must run...I must run!  Stupid, lurching zombie!  I speed toward disaster, mindless, crazed zombie that I am. I feed on it! And this may be the only warning I can give you. If you get in my way, I could eat you alive, crush your throat with my teeth and feel your blood on my face because I am not myself.  I am full of fear, hunger and longing.  Because I am a zombie.