Writing Prompt: First Blood

Recall the first time you scraped your elbow or knee and saw yourself bleed. Describe what went through your mind.

Feel free to share an early experience of injury and how you processed it.

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I remember going to a doctor when I was maybe a toddler and getting a shot in my butt.

The shot hurt so bad and I screamed, but no blood. I cried for hours afterward because of the pain.

I checked my butt when I got home. Still no blood. I then wondered if I was invisible. How could I not bleed when a doctor jabbed a huge needle into my booty?!?!

So for weeks I thought I must not bleed or have some immunity to bleeding. I asked my grandaddy if I bleed and he laughed at me. "My sweet babygirl, of course you bleed. Anything and everything that is living bleeds."

I thought maybe for the first time, Grandaddy was wrong. 

Then I was playing on my swing set and decided to jump off, I landed wrong and scrapped my right knee open. I looked down. Blood. Oh my God! Blood! I was bleeding! I looked down again in disbelief as tears flowed. I cried so hard, not from pain or fear or of bleeding but because now it was 100% positive that I was neither immune or immortal.

I told Grandaddy who laughed again and said "Alright my love, no one is immortal"

I reminded him of vampires.

He agreed. 

From that moment on I searched for real vampires.

48 years later ... I still search like the toddler did... But for different reasons now. Now it is fear, fear of death due to either my asthma or my heart disease.

Wonder if I'll ever find them.