Of Hemophobia and Water Slides

There are so many things in this world that scare me. I'm afraid of amusement park rides and water slides because the sensation of falling terrifies me. I'm afraid of traveling alone to an unfamiliar place because I have this crazy thing going on in my head wherein I have to always know where I am exactly in relation to the surface of the earth, like an internal Google Earth app or GPS in my brain, and if I can no longer mentally track where my coordinates are, I panic!

I used to also be afraid of blood and gore, not because I'm nag-iinarte, but because when I was in high school I was riding a jeepney to school one day and witnessed a motorcycle accident along the highway. Right at the very moment when I turned my head to see what the commotion was about, the scene that welcomed my sight was a lot of blood spilling from the helmet of the motorist who was sprawled on the ground. Since then, I've developed an aversion to the red sticky substance that is blood. I get nauseous and my stomach turns if I accidentally see a lot of it, whether live or from TV or the movies. Whenever I need to get my blood drawn for a medical laboratory test, I always look away from the actual blood-sucking syringe, lest I faint. So as a general rule, I try not to watch gory movies and TV shows where there will be blood spewing and decapitation and the like. If I do watch these kinds of films, it's usually because I was forced or blackmailed into it by either my siblings or my boyfriend or my friends. I have never seen a single SAW movie. I watched the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie but I automatically covered my eyes whenever the music shifted to the suspense scoring, suggesting that somebody is about to get maimed or skewered. I did the same for Final Destination, Wrong Turn, and other movies of the same genre. Personally, I find it a waste of time and a source of zero fun at all.

I didn't really read much into my hate affair with blood until an incident in 2008 when I suffered a head concussion that sent me straight to the emergency room. It was all because I cut myself on a piece of broken glass during dinner, and the sight of my own blood scared me to the point of blacking out. When I came around, I was lying down on the floor, heaving the contents of my stomach out and straight into my sister's helping arm, and I had a massive bump at the back of my cranium. I spent the night in the E.R. but thankfully they released me soon after my head scans revealed that my skull was good at its job after all, and was dutifully able to protect the squishy mush inside it that is my brain. See? My darn fear of blood almost killed me.

My trip to the ER, circa 2008

Don't even get me started about how duwag I am with ghost stories! I am the worst person to tell scary, supernatural stories to, because I would imagine all sorts of scenarios and obsess about them to the point where I can no longer function normally. I can't go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, or sleep without someone accompanying me. And I would literally have nightmares. So yeah, I also avoid (and detest) people who like talking about scary stuff. They are hazardous to my sanity.

I'm not really sure why I suddenly decided to talk about my irrational fears tonight. Maybe because I'm home alone and starting to kinda feel scared? Help!