Zombie Nightmare

I've been dealing with a rough situation the last few weeks. I'm not so good with relationships, especially when one hits a rough patch. I get scared, I hide, I shut down, I freak out, I have nightmares. It isn't a pretty sight. I did art therapy almost all day yesterday and quickly figured out what was going on (which is in itself a miracle) but am still having a hard time with being angry, figuring out how to say how I feel, and still managing to be a good, responsible person while at the same time letting someone know that they are acting like an asshole and it has to stop.

So last night, having worked through some things in therapy (and crying all morning), I had this nightmare:

The world had been taken over by zombies. There were pockets of non-zombie humans living in parts of cities, shuffled to and fro from work by guards and soldiers. I went to work in an old brick building downtown with lots of other people and I got an odd feeling about one of my friends' husbands. I avoided him and let someone know that I suspected he'd been bitten and was coming down with the virus. Someone asked me why and I shook my head. "I just have a feeling about him."

Then, zombies battered in our big wooden office doors. One of them was Stu. I started screaming and crying, hiding away until he left. I crawled out and saw a woman standing in front of another zombie. I recognized him as her late husband. She flew into his arms and he dragged her away. "She's a romantic," said a guard. "She'd rather die than live without him."

I was instantly plagued with guilt at the thought of living without Stu. I started weeping and someone started to play piano. I sat down and played the theme from "Beauty & The Beast" and pleaded with Stu to come back. I wanted to prove that I couldn't live without him either. But he never came.

The guards got angry with us for making so much noise, but it was time to leave so they shuffled us into an elevator so we could go down to the parking lot and carpool home. I was supposed to ride with a friend but I got caught up watching three people dressed as demons tiptoe into the building and when I got to the parking lot I realized my friends had left. I desperately searched for a ride and tried to get into a car with a mother, father, and child. I grabbed the man's arm and saw that in the future, he would sell both his wife and child to the zombies.

I did manage to catch a ride with a red-headed CIU student and we went into the forest to where some of us had built a hidden town. There were cobblestone streets and little houses up a hill to where I lived in a big apartment complex. The mayor was giving a speech, explaining that the new theme park was almost complete. I had a bad feeling about it, like he was plotting something evil but I couldn't put the pieces together.

It was nighttime, and the theme park workers were wandering around dressed as zombie clowns. People were freaking out so the workers had to show them their eyes so that people would realize they weren't actual zombies.

I ran into the mayor's son and saw that he was wearing my favorite hoodie. He had also stolen one of my shirts. I got them back from him and we started walking. He began telling me that he was transitioning (transgender) and that his father was furious at him. I invited him up to my apartment to look through my clothes.

We got to my apartment and I started cooking spaghetti for dinner. I showed him both closets. And then we stared out the window, down the hill at the little town, wondering what his father was planning.

Then I woke up.