A lesson in survival from zombies

I hate horror movies, and I hate being alone. Which explains why I was home alone watching a horror movie on Halloween a couple of years ago.

The trick-or-treaters had come and gone. Why I thought turning on “Night of the Living Dead” late in the evening was a good idea, I can’t imagine. This is the girl who had a panic attack in sixth grade when a classmate simply described “The Exorcist.” And I was doubly wiggy lately, since I’d just broken up with my long-term boyfriend and he had moved to New York City to attend grad school. It was an ugly breakup; he had proposed for the second time and I had refused again. Still, I missed him; it was a fresh wound, and the separation anxiety was terrible.

“Night of the Living Dead” is the 1968 classic black-and-white film about zombies who kill and eat the living to survive. A bunch of twentysomethings take shelter in a farmhouse, where they board up the windows and doors. If they can survive the night, the hope is that the zombies will be gone by dawn.

I’d spent many nights lately keeping my own personal demons at bay. In addition to the breakup, I’d lost my father to cancer a few months earlier. Trying to make sense of the meaning of his complicated life made me reassess the direction of my own. I was plagued by regrets about decisions I’d made in the first 10 years of adulthood and confusion about how to make better choices in the coming years.

Should I have married the ex-boyfriend? The question haunted me. I couldn’t fault him in any way, but something was missing. Was my desire for “something” unrealistic, immature? Would I rather be alone than with a kind, loving companion? What kind of sense did that make?

Especially when there are horror movies on TV! It’s at times like that when you really need a masculine shoulder to burrow into.

I couldn’t turn off “Night of the Living Dead,” even though it was scaring the bejesus out of me. The dog was getting truly annoyed at the number of times I kept throwing the afghan over our heads on the couch. But I just had to see if anyone survived.

The movie ended. I loosened my death grip on the remote, turned on all the lights in the house, looked out all the windows and went to bed, where I jerked at every small noise. But I made it through the night. And the next night. And the next. Life went on.

My angst abated. I learned that there are worse things than being alone. Such as being with someone for whom you have no passion. Or being with a jerk.

Or having your brain eaten by zombies. Where there is life, there is hope for a better tomorrow.