Dear Diary,

I am sitting in the farthest corner of my room. The lights are on the lowest setting possible without it being visible outside my door, my door is closed and locked, and my blankets for my bed are wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak. It is the middle of the night for us, and we should all be fast asleep. In fact, I'm almost certain my brothers are. But I am not, nor have I even attempted to do so tonight.

It has been one week since our encounter with the fear-inducing mushrooms. While the first couple of days my brothers, Casey, and April looked tired and haunted by their visions, by now they all looked recovered, like they have shaken off the nightmarish scenes.

Me? I am not so easily calmed. If anything, I'm even more terrified then I was during the actual vision. My nightmares have not fled, despite the facing of my fear when I overcame the drug. In fact, they have only grown even more frightening, more realistic, and even more frequent. I'm afraid to go to sleep at night now, because I fear the demons that will awake when I fall asleep.

Every night, the visions leek into my brain, and I am forced to watch my brothers turn their backs on me, and listen to them chant about how I failed them, how they are all dead because of me. Their voices swirl around me, becoming louder and louder until they drown out my own thoughts, my heart pounding a dreadful taboo to their accusations.

Then, I watch them all fall to a katana blade that bears a sickening resemblance to my own. I watch them die around me, and I can't move, or speak, or do anything but watch in horror. Then their bodies fade away, and I am overcome with darkness. I can't feel or see or hear anything. It's vast darkness in every direction. I can't even see or feel my own body. For all I know, I do not exist. I am alone. All alone.

The torture of the non-existence feeling lasts for what feels like hours, then I am jolted awake to find that barely an hour has past.

My two biggest fears in one horrible nightmare, one that grows worse every time I am forced to witness it. My fear of failing my brothers, my family, and my fear of being alone and forgotten.

I am unable to shrug them off like my brothers, to forget or at least forget them like my brothers. For them, their fears are material, and are not likely to come to pass in the form they were shown (well, except for Donnie's, but I doubt rejection would come that harshly from April). My fears, they haunt me every single moment of my life.

I do realize that everyone fears failure to some extent. But I fear it far more than most others. I am the leader, and if I fail, then my brothers, the people I love with all my heart, will die. I cannot fail. It is not acceptable. I can't lose my brothers. And so I fear failure the way I do, the intensity that I do. Failure is practically the equivalent of death for me.

As for being alone, that's not as easy to nail down.

I love my family more than anything else. They are my entire life. Without them, I don't think I could live. Or if I did, I would be a hollow shell, walking listlessly through life. They are my heart, my strength, my very soul. To be apart from them, to be all alone, forgotten and tossed away . . . it feels like a fate worse than death.

My fears are linked, in a way. My fear of failing my brothers could lead to my fear of being alone. If I fail my brothers, and cause them to die, my father would surely, and rightfully, disown me. April and Casey wouldn't want anything to do with me if I caused the deaths of their best friends. Those are the only friendly souls I know, who willing interact with me on a regular basis. Without them, I would truly be alone.

These fears loom over me every single moment. Even before the hallucinated visions, they already were weighing heavy on my mind, already haunting my dreams. The fear dug only enhanced my fears, adding fuel to the fire.

I fear when our day is over, when I am forced to retire to my room. If I even try to sleep, I am bombarded by the dreams, and I wake up not even an hour later. The past couple nights, I have forsaken even an attempt at sleep. I can feel fatigue weighing my eyelids down, but I refuse to give in. I know that I will have to sleep eventually, and it is cowardly not to accept the nightmares, and continue to sleep, but the dreams completely fill my mind with a terror like no other. I cannot run from these visions, I cannot fight them. All I can do to get rid of them is to either overcome the fear completely (not happening), or to avoid sleep. So, cowardly as it is, I will stay awake until I am forced to sleep. Maybe then, I will be so exhausted my mind will be too tired to torture me.

My writing is becoming sloppy, barely readable, as I scribble at light speed. I never knew how much I could vent about my fears. Probably because I have never had the chance to vent to anything or anyone before. I should quit now before I tear the page or scrawl over the lines.

I hope to find peace in my slumber soon. It is not healthy for fear to rule my life like this, this I know, but I have no choice right now.

Sayonara for now,

Leonardo