The Collective Unconscious

How will you ever know, if you don’t let it bite you?
The bite may be deadly, and the odds of survival are astronomical, but if you don’t face your fear and conquer it, it will eventually conquer you.
So I did, but it wasn’t intentional.
I was attacked three times, and I successfully survived each attack. Only one attack led to my being bitten.
It got me on the neck like a vampire, but I knew this was not going to be a romantic immortality.
I thought it might be the end.
I walked down the dark alley alone feeling defeated.
I told my relatives in the calmest manner that I had a day at most left on earth.
The lights were on but nobody was home.
They all looked like the cat whose eyes were glass marbles that I saw crushed under a car one winter in my childhood.
Surprisingly most were as calm as I was about the whole ordeal.
I suppose they’d already lived without my presence most of their lives and vice versa, but now here I was, more present than ever, saying my final goodbyes.
I had resigned myself to an inevitable fate.
Would I suddenly go mad without warning, attacking people randomly, like a rabid animal, or would I start slowly losing my sanity, so that little by little my thoughts would veer toward the absurd, and I’d eventually succumb and accept this as the new normal?
No one even seemed that concerned.
I suppose my real fear was losing consciousness more than anything.
I didn’t want to be like the walking dead.
I didn’t want to be contaminated.
The contagion was something I’d spent my life avoiding for the most part, though I do admit there were times when oblivion got the better of me.
It seems obvious now that if I was in that much emotional pain, I’d find a way to numb it out, anesthetize the anger.
There would be much to miss in terms of the aesthetic beauty and yet part of me welcomed a release from the struggle of enduring life among the walking dead.
The night passed without incident, in fact a whole day and night went by and nothing.
I disinfected the bite and bandaged it.
It didn’t seem to be showing any signs of spreading.
That’s when it occurred to me that I was immune.
I was that one odd human in a billion or so who just happened to have a natural immunity to zombies.
The whole dream reminded me of something from “The Last of Us” series. How ironic that I’d be Ellie.
How fitting too, that as I began to heal from complex trauma, and build boundaries, I’d dream about my worst fears.
I searched for the interpretation and received this advice; “Getting bit by a zombie can represent repressed fears, emotions or memories that are threatening to resurface. It can also represent the need to confront and overcome one’s fears or negative emotions in order to grow and move forward in life. If you are feeling disconnected from yourself or the world around you, consider ways to reconnect through self-care, spiritual practices or spending time in nature.” I believe it was Jung who said it best, “there’s no coming to consciousness without pain.” How right he was.
When you wake up and everyone you know is still unconscious, seeing them is like attending a funeral for the living.