Once, a nurse told me that I was lucky because of the quick peek of a thick, indigo vein on the inside of my left elbow. I get about a tablespoon of blood drawn every six months to make sure my thyroid levels are balanced. My thyroid gland doesn’t produce the normal level of hormones, and it is common practice to check patients with underactive thyroids twice a year to make sure their medication is still at the right amount. They never have to stick me more than once, but I still hate the way the needle slides under my skin. There’s a scar now, a tiny, darkened spot indicating where to open up my vein. I can feel the blood leave in splashes timed with the pulse of my heart. Drawing blood isn’t like filling up a syringe, a smooth flow. Blood moves and while the needle does some of the work, it’s mostly your own heart that pushes blood up through the needle so that your blood splatters against the glass sides of the syringe before sliding down into a tiny red sea. I turn my head away from the needle and mentally try to separate my left arm from my body. It helps to wear a jacket sleeve on just my right arm, leaving my left arm bare. My right arm, warm, is still mine, still safe; I don’t want any sensation from where I’m losing blood. A woman my size has about 3.5 liters of blood in her body and is constantly producing new blood cells. I will never have enough blood drawn to be in danger of physical harm. I have nothing to be afraid of.

People think that blood is one color. It’s not. Thick clots come out as black; the blood that dries in the cracks of your skin is dark brown. Blood has a green tint when it’s mixed with bile from your gallbladder, the only two things left for your stomach to throw up when you’re sick with the flu in 7th grade. It’s violet, spreading across your then-boyfriend’s cheap blue sheets. Delicate pink and foamy when you’re rinsing stains out of your clothes in the sink. More translucent than you’d expect when it spills from your hands onto the tile floor, scattering in a pattern like oil on water.

I lost consciousness for the first time in 8th grade health class. My teacher was describing how Princess Diana bled out after her car crash. I pictured my own neck, artery open, my blood spilling out too fast. I felt it in my neck, too, a tingle from the bottom of my left ear down to my collarbone, pushing my throat closed. At the time, I thought I could feel the artery in my neck. Later, I would realize I was feeling my Vagus nerve going into overdrive. I went to the front to ask for a pass to the nurse’s office and then I was slumped forward on my teacher’s desk and she was standing up over me. She pulled her chair around and helped me back into it. Another girl in the class pushed me down the hallway to the nurse’s office. The chair had one bad wheel and we kept veering toward the wall.

The Vagus nerve is actually two nerves on either side of the neck, but only my left side lights up and sparks when I see or picture blood, pushing my throat closed. When the nerve is overstimulated, as in the case of a phobia, blood pressure drops. The nerve also secretes a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, which is essential in breathing and is disrupted in the case of panic. The combination of low blood pressure and near-hyperventilation lead me to the ground while a room of people who have the exact same nerve as I do remain standing, calm.

There is an evolutionary theory for the fear of blood. If our ancestors were losing a lot of their own blood, they were probably being attacked; if they fainted at the sight of their blood, they could appear dead and, therefore, less appealing to the animal attacking them. Blood pressure also drops when you’re unconscious, slowing the rate of blood loss. I printed out copies of research articles on the matter, thinking that one day I would show them to someone—classmates who asked what was wrong with me; the school nurse when she told me to go back to class, I was fine. Black ink that would say, louder than I ever could, There is nothing wrong with me. There is a reason. I pulled psychology articles, too, that told me that we are all plagued with a huge, mostly unconscious fear of our own mortality. When we drip red, we’re reminded of it. I’m not weak. I’m aware.

But I watched my classmates leave health class on their feet or ignore a paper cut and struggled to convince myself I’m not broken.

My nose started bleeding in the middle of a work shift once. I was straightening cat food cans when I felt the rush through my sinuses, and even though I started running then, I left a trail of blood down the right aisle of a Target in southern Indiana. On the bathroom floor, toilet paper pressed against my face, my walkie-talkie went off, a manager calling a cart attendant to clean up a biohazard. Some 16-year-old making minimum wage had to block off an entire section of the store and spend twenty minutes mopping up my blood and disinfecting the floor. A manager followed the trail of blood to the bathroom and knocked on the door. I was silent, caught in a grip of panic, blood in my throat and rushing to my cheeks. I didn’t want anyone to know it was my blood splattered between the groceries and cleaning supplies, that I was so easily reduced to a ball of a person on the floor, so easily prone to losing a vital part of myself. I didn’t want them to see me bleed.

Blood doesn’t want to leave your body. Like any liquid, it has surface tension, a weak force that attempts to keep the molecules together. Surface tension is why blood swells at the tip of your finger, falls in a drop. Blood falling through the air forms perfect spheres, but they aren’t nearly strong enough to withstand the shattering force of gravity driving them into the floor.

My worst nosebleed started as thick drops on my then-boyfriend’s light blue pillowcase. I ran to his bathroom, but soon I couldn’t control the blood. His floor was covered in toilet paper, wilted white flower petals broken from a stem soaked too long in red dye. The blood was coming so fast it dripped down the back of my throat and, when I tilted my head forward to try and combat that, blood fell over my lips. Before, I’d thought keeping blood out of your mouth was as simple as keeping your head tilted back and lips closed, but if you try to speak, try to explain where your bottle of Xanax is, you can’t avoid your tongue brushing against your lips. The “p” in “purse” presses your lips together, giving fresh blood a quick transport to your tongue. “Hurry” is worse; there’s no way to make the “hu” without opening your lips.

I would find out months later that the cause of my severe nosebleeds was a slightly deviated septum. The center cartilage of my nose created an angle that left a sizable vein particularly susceptible to rupture. Even though my nose bled for the better part of an hour, I didn’t lose nearly enough blood to put me in danger; it isn’t physically possible for that to happen with a nosebleed. But it’s not the simple blood loss. It’s the black clots of blood that feel so vital but just get thrown in the trash, the stick of your own sweat growing cold on your skin, the black dots of panic that block your vision, the awareness that something is wrong with you and you can’t stop it or control it.

I ended up curled in the fetal position in his bathtub, letting the blood swell into a puddle underneath my cheek because my hands were shaking too much to hold a tissue to my face. I remember feeling utterly weak that night: shaking hands, pale cheeks, damp skin. But, more than that, it was having me leak everywhere. Few things are more personal than blood. It’s yours, it flows through your body, through your brain and heart and lungs. Those cells have been everywhere in my body. There is an intimacy that is crushed or, at the very least, becomes clouded. When I bleed, I’m everywhere. Part of me is rinsed down the bathtub drain; thrown out with the trash; shipped off in a vial for tests. I know, rationally, I will make new blood cells, but I’ll never get over the shock of watching something that was inside of me and that made me whole dripping onto the floor.

Extremities are a problem, too. I scraped my toe once on vacation. Fingers and toes don’t clot as quickly as parts of the body closer to the heart. By the time I walked back to the condo my white sandal was slick with blood and I slipped every time I put weight on my right foot. I made it to the bathroom before I hit the floor, somewhere between unconsciousness and pure panic. I remember my parents over me, discussing whether I needed to go get stitches. I shut my eyes tighter and turned my face down so I couldn’t see anything. When my parents tried to get me to stand up, I curled up—bleeding foot exempt, sticking out from my ball of a body—and pretended I couldn’t hear them. I didn’t have to get stitches, but I’ll always have the white half-moon scar from where my skin fell away from my body. The scar swells out from my skin a little, like blood is still ready to flow at the slightest invitation.

Growing up, my parents had a giant medicine cabinet stuffed with pills and bottles. There seemed to be a cure for everything: headaches, scratches, upset stomach. I grew up with the belief -- or maybe in hindsight, just the illusion -- that I could control my body. For the most part, I can still convince myself that this is true, that my body will not betray me, but when I bleed I’m opened up to a deeper, much darker truth. I cannot stop my blood. I have to wait for it to taper out, for the clots to form, and there is nothing I can do to change or speed up the process.

After getting blood drawn once, the nurse taped the usual cotton ball to my vein and then wrapped my elbow in a disposable bandage that would normally have been used for a gash or tear in the skin. When I walked out, my dad raised his eyebrows and asked how big of a needle she had used, but it felt appropriate to me. I kept the wrapping on for three days, until the tiny cut had begun to heal.

I don’t get nosebleeds anymore—I had the angled vein cauterized, burnt shut with silver nitrate—but I don’t think I’ll ever shake the habit of running my hand under my nose just to make sure no blood is leaking. And when I get a paper cut, stub my toe, scrape against something, I’ll keep that moment of dread and of closed eyes, of vague hope that there won’t be much blood. And every six months I’ll be back in the clinic, left arm exposed, the thick vein ready for a needle, for draining, for a bandage, and, when the puncture heals after a week, for the darkening of the small, pinpoint scar inside my elbow.

Rachel Wyatt graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Evansville. She works as a software engineer and likes to spend her free time reading, writing, and exploring nature. Currently, she lives in Virginia with her husband and their dog and cat.