If I could change one thing about myself, it would not be my hair. It would not be my nose, nor my eyes or my height. It wouldn't be my personality or my work ethic.
It would be my irrational, pathological, all-encompassing fear and/or hatred of blood and the body in general. It's really my biggest weakness. And the problem is, I know it shouldn't be. Many people view bodies as amazing biological machines; I view them as squirm-inducing sacks of organs. I'm not afraid of spiders, snakes, bats, rats, dogs, water, darkness, or even death; I'm afraid of something I will never be able to escape-my own body.
It wouldn't be nearly so bad if there had been a terrifying moment in my childhood involving blood. But no-I just remember always hating it. When I was two I had to get surgery, and the first thing I did when I woke up was go berserk and rip the IV cord out of my arm. For weeks I refused to even look at my leg, which was where the stitches were. When I was five, I escaped out of the doctor's office when it was time to get a shot; five nurses had to prise my hands off a scale and hold me to a chair while I got the shot. I still want to do that now, but I'm usually too weak at the knees to consider putting up such a fight.
It's more than just a fear-I have absolutely no tolerance for it. I can't take my pulse. I can't have my blood pressure taken. I sometimes even turn off music if the drums sound too much like a heartbeat. And forget about IVs, shots, and even remotely medical TV shows. I don't even know what I'll do when we have to dissect animals in Biology-I will say or do literally anything to get out of that. The Bodies Exhibit was bad enough. And what happens if I ever have to give blood? What if I have a heart disease? I don't know what else I can say to convey the fact that everything related to the body is intolerable to me. It's not necessarily fear, but that's the easiest way to phrase it. It's more like my mind simply cannot stand the thought of it and will do anything to get away.
The only good thing that has come of this is that I don't laugh at other people's fears. On TV, you always see people who are deathly afraid of peaches or cotton balls going on shows. The host invariably pulls out a peach or whatever it is the person is afraid of, and the audience laughs at the person's terrified reaction. I think that simultaneously scaring and humiliating the person would just make it worse. I mean, I could put my hand on my neck and count my pulse for hours, but that wouldn't make each second any less torturous.
This is going to sound really melodramatic, but I wish every day that I will suddenly be cured, that I will be able to learn about the kidneys without flinching, that I will be able to watch Band of Brothers without cringing and turning it off. But I know it's not going to happen.
And yeah, I did get kind of squeamish while writing this post.
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