Bad Zombie 'Journal Entry': Who We Were

One thing no one ever mentioned was how much the whole 'zombie apocalypse' thing would change how we look at the world.

Well, I mean, they talk about part of it - how you kiss the life you knew goodbye, how the world goes from being full of wonder to being full of unimaginable horrors - how your priorities change.

But no one ever thinks about how incredibly lost we all are.

My name is Anna. I was 23 years old when everything went to hell. I was on anti-depressants, bipolar medication, and ADD meds. 

I'd shot a gun once in my life. It was a shotgun, I think - or, a rifle? I was pretty good for a newbie. Any fights I'd had had been messy and short and ultimately involved no real lasting physical damage.

I went to college part time. I played video games.

I had a dog.

But who I was- that was different.

I was a girl who had a lot of imagination, but no faith. I loved animals, I was allergic to dust, was horribly awkward around people. At night, when I couldn't sleep because I felt like I was wasting my life, I used to think of a lot of things that made me sad, or things that scared me. 

I was a girl who saw humor in the weirdest things.

I was a girl who couldn't stop loving someone, no matter what they'd done to her.

I was a procrastinator, an actress, a mess.

I was always just on the outside of any group. 

And I fit right where I was.

That life- the one with the dog, the video games, the college, the sleepless nights, the medication- that's where I was in the world. That was my place. Maybe not forever, but..

The thing that no one says/thinks about is, it isn't that we had to grow up, or toughen up, to survive. We didn't actively decide to change- none of us did, no matter what the hell those survivalist assholes try to say. We all had to change, because, the fact is, big parts of us just- died. It wasn't just our lives that are gone- the 'we' we knew was obliterated, too. Questions, dreams, wishes we'd harbored, some of us for our whole lives, were gone in the blink of an eye.

My ex best friend, the first person I loved - I remember finding out he was back in the area- maybe 6 months before everything happened. We hadn't spoken in 3 years- since he walked out of my life. I remember hearing that he was working in a pharmacy my family had gone to since I was little.

I remember feeling drawn to that stupid pharmacy. Spending a lot of time asking myself, what if..? I can't count how many days I wanted to go there.  Just because I needed to. Or, I felt like I did. So many questions that needed answering. So many loose ends to tie up.

Before all this, I had a passionate hatred for unfinished stories.

And now everyone's story is unfinished, isn't it? All of us were ripped out from our unfinished books and plunged into this. We don't know where we fit. We all lost so much. We are all lost. 

No matter how much we may tell ourselves otherwise, none of us knows who they are anymore.