I decided to overthink my fear. Sue me, I’m a Scorpio.
“What is your biggest fear?”
“Blood.”
Growing up, I had been a sickly child who didn’t get to go to my nursery classes because I was confined at home, watching Looney Tunes over the smoke and noise of a nebulizer to treat my frequent asthma attacks. When I mean “sickly”, it’s when I was confined both at home and at the hospital majority of my childhood. Dengue fever, UTI, Asthma. Most of my childhood memories were made up of trips to the albularyo because of fevers or coughs that would never go away. I’d also remember the bitterness of medications I drank that took an hour of persuading, coercing, and pleading from my parents for me to drink. I took too many medications back then that I developed black teeth when I was a kid.
Most of all, I had too many encounters with blood-related sicknesses or accidents. The most distinct one was that there was a point in my childhood where I’d wake up every night with a nosebleed. I used to sleep in between my parents back then. Imagine the horror of waking up to your child with blood dripping down their nose like some kind of an exorcism film. I would hear the panic and worry in Mama’s voice as she would wake up Papa. I rarely hear that kind of voice from her, so in turn, I would also panic. Was I dying?
It went on for weeks but we never really went to the doctor to know the cause or treat it. But I heard from them that I might be probably just suffering the consequences of the abrupt changes in temperature and weather. My parents just got used to the routine of sleepily tilting my head up in the middle of the night until the bleeding stops. But not me, I never got used to it. I was still on high alert long after the bleeding stopped with the lingering taste of copper at the back of my throat. There were nights that I’ve mistaken the nosebleed for a runny nose and the next morning, I would wake up to the sight of bloody shirt and hands like I just murdered somebody in my sleep.
I like to think that this was where I started to develop my fear of blood.
One would say that the experience could have made me used to the sight of blood. But, it didn’t. The gamble of opening my eyes to blood or not traumatized me. Up until now, when I’d be having a runny nose at night, I would almost always turn on my phone’s flashlight to check if it is blood. I’m not grossed out by the dark thick liquid, no. It’s the implication that something serious might have happened.
Like that one time in grade school where I wondered what would it feel like to run with my eyes closed. The feeling was liberating, with the wind against my body. It was like that scene from The Sound of Music where Julie Andrews was singing on a grass field with her hands held up. But it didn’t felt so freeing when I smacked my head into a concrete post. I bounced back and fell on my behind, eyes still closed. There was that horrifying moment again. The uncertainty of what liquid was dripping from my nose. Was it blood? It was. I saw it coating my hands again. Like those many nights. There was blood. Something terrible happened.
I didn’t know why everything was hazy and I felt so sleepy. My aunt, who was taking care of us that time, had found me and wiped all the blood from my face that I couldn’t bear to do. The parents and yayas waiting for their children along with Aunty Upeng were alarmed once they saw my state. The clinic was closed during that hour as it was exams week, so the parents fussed over me while I drowsily leaned over my aunt. They bought an ice candy from the canteen and put it to my forehead which apparently had a bump. I also remembered throwing up a lot. In the bathroom. In the pavement. Even in the tricycle we rode on the way to the hospital. Aunty Upeng apologized to the driver, but I still felt bad. I didn’t say anything though. I just wanted to sleep back then. But I was continuously woken up by my aunt who was dragging me to the hospital where my mother was waiting.
I had a concussion that afternoon. And apparently, I also broke my nose. Fortunately, I wasn’t confined which relieved me so much from my worries. However, when I discovered we were going to the hospital, I panicked. Hospitals are for emergencies, accidents, deaths. It’s the place I’ve been confined in too much in my life with lingering scents of rubbing alcohol, squeaky wheels from metal carts containing rattling needles and syringes that have been injected on my arms too much too count. The main problem I had that time was if I were to be confined and injected with an IV drip. Not my concussion or broken nose. It was the IV drip and how they would puncture my skin. The act of opening my flesh with a sharp object.
My fear of blood came hand in hand with hospitals. When I see blood, I think of being in the hospital. I hate how stark white hospitals are. White bed sheets and pillowcases. White walls and floors. White uniforms. White cottons, tissues, and bandages. I hate it so much because dark red blood looks so glaringly daunting on white objects or surfaces. Somehow, it amplifies its presence in a room. And it is inevitable to encounter blood while in a hospital because of my frequent nosebleeds and injections. I’ve learned the skill of not moving my left arm for hours because of the fear that blood would appear on the tube connecting my hand and the IV drip.
This reminds me of how I had always been longing to donate blood in a blood drive despite this fear of mine. But I’ve always made up excuses whenever there’s a blood drive in the university. I’d say, “I’m busy with school work that day” or “I slept late last night, it’s not allowed”. The truth is I’m really just avoiding this confrontation with blood and needles. Will I faint? My friend told me once how her blood stopped flowing out because she was nervous. Would I experience the same thing? It would be like an IV drip all over again. Only this time, it won’t be clear liquid flowing from the tube. It would be what I was avoiding: dark red warm blood.
Mama convinces me to this day to take up Medicine and be a doctor. This is the very reason why I didn’t and would not. I still panic even when the blood does not come from me.
Like that one night when my family and I were on the road to eat somewhere after the Sunday mass. There was no traffic because Papa was driving smoothly. I was at the back leaning in between the driver’s seat and passenger seat in front and we were all happily talking over each other; each with our own different stories to tell. I remembered someone was singing – it could have been me – and was abruptly cut off. I was thrown forward the same time Papa hit the brakes and something crashed into the front of the car. Thankfully, I had taken a hold of the car seats so my face was still intact. No noses broken.
I remembered Papa being calm, despite having a known personality of being too sensitive and caring for the condition of our car. He exits the vehicle along with Mama, then, there was a blur of commotion outside. My brothers and I were asked to be seated at the back of the vehicle and the car’s sliding door was opened and a man was laid on the floor of the car. The door wasn’t closed the whole ride to the hospital as his feet dangled over. We were discouraged to ask questions or look over the man. But I had seen his foot. I was overtaken with the feeling that I should not move or else something will happen. The seats covered the rest of his body, but I saw his foot. His were wounded; blood and dirt covered his foot to his ankles. It was unmoving. And it looked pretty pale. To this day, I never knew if he survived. All I knew was that he was the one who hit our car with his motorcycle because he had been drinking. I wasn’t the one bleeding that night, but the image still haunts me to this day.
“But what about your period?”
I’d scoff. Maybe if they’re an acquaintance or someone I just met, I would politely smile. This question really comes off as patronizing for me when one asks this in a teasing manner. It’s like assuming someone with glasses cannot see the number of fingers you’re holding up. They can see it, only a lot less clearly. People seem to exaggerate the irrationality of these situations and try to know to the extent of these irrationalities mockingly. Like maybe they’d expect me to faint then die while sitting on a toilet upon seeing my bloody underwear. Or maybe they’d expect that I’d avoid going to the toilet and handling the bloody mess. Yes, blood makes me anxious but I have no choice but to get used to the sight of it. Actually, period blood does not alarm me for the most part. But sometimes, I’d be horrified by the amount of blood leaving my body. Or flushing the toilet becomes dreadful because I have to take in the sight of a bloody toilet. It’s similar to saying “Oh you don’t like blood? But it’s inside you….” then comes their how-is-this-possible-I-need-to-know-more gaze with a little bit – just a little bit – of judgement in their eyes. This tiny glimpse of judgement would rile up something in me, a need to justify my fear, despite knowing that I don’t need to defend myself. I’d explain anyway.
What people typically assume is that blood scares me because it’s blood; it’s gross. What they don’t know is that bleeding gives me an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and panic because the feeling is so much like the idea that something is leaking from you. And it’s oozing in the colour of a hauntingly dark red, something-terrible-happened red, dangerous glaring red. Might it be from a cut or wound, a part of you has been forcefully opened and that scares me more than anything. The body should be intact in the assurance that you’re okay. Blood is supposed to be INSIDE the body. The intact body. And when it’s not, it automatically turns on a panic alarm in my head with the bold words of SOMETHING HAPPENED flashing on and off in my mind because blood’s not inside me where it should be. It has made its way outside through an opening I don’t know where. I’m open somewhere. Vulnerable. The very thing that sustains my life is flowing out. And the idea that it’s already outside my body leaves me a feeling of not being in control. I don’t just simply cover up a wound with a band aid and call it a day. I still have to sit for a while and convince myself I’m not dying.
When I say blood, I also mean pain. Of flesh being sliced opened. People would tell me stories about how they were cut or wounded by an accident and I’d imagine the whole thing. Mama once told me a story of how she cut her arm up because she draw her arm back while a jewelry box closed on her, so the clasp tore her skin open. My mind would close in on the description of her flesh being torn and imagine it in every detail. The smooth flesh being run over with a sharp metal. At first, nothing will happen, or at most, the affected, marked skin would slowly turn pale like a chalked sketch of the outline of the cut. A few seconds in, little droplets of blood will seep through, slowly peeking out from the cut as if asking for a permission to come out. You move the injured arm and blood will flow out of it like dark red wine slowly dripping from a bottle. You move it more, and then you can see the skin opening, forming a mouth. Through the blood, you can see bits of pink flesh, the texture and appearance so similar to tocino – not the ones you order in carinderias where the pork is still a vibrant light pink; it’s the colour of the tocino you cook at home where you overcook it somehow because it tastes sweeter when burnt. The colour bordering between pink and red. I could immediately visualize it happening to my own skin. And then, a phantom of the pain would follow. The intensity of the phantom pain dependent on what my phobia tells me how painful it must be. That’s the routine. As a joke, my friends would share images of their fingers cut up or hold them up to my face when we’re together. As a habit, I’d clench my fists, my nails forming red little moon marks on my palms. I’d look away, of course. But my mind has already conjured up a visualization of how it came to be. It gets easier once the phantom pain pass.
When I say blood, I also mean death. I do not mean that bleeding automatically leads to death. It is the possibility of death that haunts me. That when I see blood, I am filled with the overwhelming panic to not die. So, maybe I fear blood because it implies a painful death. Maybe what I really fear is the thought that the last thing I’d feel when I’m alive is excruciating pain from mutilation, from my own flesh being torn open. But then again, I also fear the uncertainty of death. Death. How peaceful I envision it to be, but also how disruptive it is to a life I like to control. Dying means confronting the fact that I didn’t get to live my life the way I wanted it to be. Seeing blood haunts me with the concept of life flashing before my eyes. I wouldn’t say that mine would be boring to watch because I’m sure the flashes would contain several experiences of mine that I enjoyed. Flashes of me in the middle of a laugh while on a road trip with my family because Mama was teasing Papa’s funny English pronunciations. Flashes of me waking up on our terrace to the view of a pink sunrise; my friends still asleep on the mess of pillows and blankets I snatched from my room and laptops still open after a night of editing a film. Flashes of me floating peacefully on my back in Pasacao; my body being rocked by the constant waves of the sea and my ears drowned out by the sound of shallow waters, as I stare up the night sky and try to find a Scorpio constellation I once memorized from ninth grade. Seeing blood taunts me with the possibility that these could stop existing in an instant.
However, these flashes are not only limited to the good parts. I expect a re-run of several of my breakdowns; those caused by little petty things, like not getting to watch Jojo Circus peacefully because of a noisy construction happening in our living room, to those breakdowns caused by serious things like my parents constantly comparing me to my neighbour who could sing flawlessly to the high notes of Aegis songs or to my classmate who have been the top of my class since kindergarten. Maybe the flashes could surprise me and show me memories I’ve repressed and pushed too much to the back of my brain in hopes of completely erasing it from my memory because of how painful it had been. Flashes of a dark, cold room; my bed a witness to many of my sleepless nights asking God the million dollar question “what is the point anymore?” Or maybe a glimpse of Mama having a panic attack, mumbling “ayoko na, beh. ayoko na” while I have to hold her and calmly tell her to breathe with me as I desperately tried to keep my lips from trembling or my voice from cracking. God forbid the flashes show me a hunched figure of myself on the floor of our dorm’s cr, staring blankly at the white tiles, a razor in hand. Pathetic. Vulnerable. Not in control.
And then, death starts to look like a good idea. I never even willingly made the choice to be in this merciless rollercoaster ride we call “life” in the first place. So is it really scary to stop existing? Death seems so quiet and still. A possibility of nothingness. And in my life, there have been too many instances where I am desperate for that stillness, that nothingness. Buried underneath all the sunshine and rainbows we constantly try to project in our lives, I have been yearning to stop feeling altogether. I am reminded that maybe, just maybe, a part of me actually craves death. If it takes pain to stop existing, to stop feeling, then a painful death looks a lot less threatening and more inviting.
Then and only then, it gets a little easier seeing blood.
