Blog of Blood

Yep. Not kidding. This blog will be about things bloody. And that isn’t fake stage blood or metaphoric blood, it’s the real deal. Red. Viscous. Spurting from the body. Falling like drops of demon rain. I was a bystander to someone else’s trauma yesterday and, being who I am, by the act of witnessing was sucked in to the vortex.  Now spun out the other side am still finding I have  symptoms of sorts to deal with. If hyper-empathy syndrome exists, I certainly have a touch. I’ve always found it near impossible to defend myself from other’s emotions. Valuable for an actor and writer I suppose, but also the reason I live alone and why I am so poor at prioritizing my relationships.  So I figured I’d try blogging it out. See if setting down the images of blood that are exhausting me and keeping me awake by turns will quiet them. Shrink them back down to thumbnails and then slip back down into that black stinky sticky oily oozie sludge puddle at the bottom of my soul.

I won’t detail the event here. It isn’t my story except to say that yesterday someone fell down and hurt themselves just outside our lunch room door. There was blood. Lots and lots of blood like only a head wound can supply. Be assured, the person received timely assistance, never lost consciousness and will recover. But there was a lot more blood than I have seen in many, many years. I helped a bit in that I got my car and drove her to the hospital and stayed with her telling my usual rambling stories till they called her in for treatment and her friend arrived. Not exactly super-hero stuff, an hour and ten minutes and I was back at my desk.  Then things started getting a bit weird.

First I can’t lose the smell. Just found myself a few minutes ago spritzing cologne, which I almost never wear. It seems to have lodged way up in the back of my sinuses. Then everybody kept thanking me. Which seems to be puzzling me to the extreme. When someone bleeds you tell them to put pressure on the wound and get them help as swiftly and safely as you are able. Don’t you? The thanking thing just makes me kind of squirmy. Being praised for my calm and my ability to act.  Hey I just drove and patted her back till the pros took over. The co-workers who picked her off the ground and materialized a chair and ice back and towels they were cool. I was just trying to get my keys and stay calm enough to drive safely.

Since though it is true that all the incidents of blood in my life have re-surfaced and marched through my head with a big brass band accompaniment. The garden shears through my right calf when I was about six. My baby sister getting her front teeth knocked out on the ferry and screaming for hours. A friend cutting her foot on a broken beer bottle on the beach and the arterial blood fountaining out, my Mom picking up a 12 year old girl and sprinting up 150 steps from the beach to the cabin. Luck having it that a plastic surgeon was in residence next door. Cleaning up a puddle of blood from the aged institutional linoleum floor of a retreat centre. Alone in the echoing hall, my parents having gone in the ambulance with the aged victim. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to get it up off the floor, it kept smearing and staining. Then leaning over the edge of the galvanized steel laundry tub, water running for hours and hours trying to get the blood out of the rags and mop and finally off my hands. Stupid that, in retrospect rubber gloves and a bottle of bleach would’ve done the trick faster. But I was alone and it was a lot of blood and all I could think was erasing every spec of the event so that my Mom wouldn’t have to face it on her return. Not all I could think. I didn’t like the guy. I felt guilty that perhaps I had wished him ill, and ill had occurred.

There, surely that is all. Maybe a bit of gargling with mouth wash and a cold glass of water will do the rest. And sleep. Clean, deep, sleep in a cozy bed, gratitude on my lips and angels to guard my dreams.