Bandaged

Allow me to explain how blood ended up on my bra – the same blood that inspired How to Get Blood Out. A few weeks ago, during a fight, I hit my arm into an old window. The glass shattered. I got a few small, superficial cuts on my hand and face from the shards but there was one deep one – right on the back of my upper left arm. That’s where the blood came from. And there was a lot of it.

I ran to the bathtub and turned the shower on over my cuts, still in shock, softly sobbing, “I just want my Mommabear.” That’s when I noticed it: a thin stream of blood quietly shooting out of my arm. Wonderful.

I pressed on it. Poured on some Betadine. Wrapped it up. Survival mode. The next morning, it was still bleeding. So I did what most of us do – I Googled it. One answer later: “If a wound bleeds for longer than 20 minutes, go to the ER.” So I did just that.

The doctors were kind. But because it had already been nearly 14 hours, there wasn’t much they could do. I got a tetanus shot and instructions to clean it daily, re-bandage it and keep using Betadine.

After about a week, most people would’ve let the wound breathe – it was healing well. But I kept re-bandaging it for nearly three weeks.

Call it overkill. Call it precaution. Call it whatever you want. For me, it felt necessary. After everything – from Little Me to Adult Me, from addiction to sobriety and every scraped-up piece of me in between – my mind is in a constant state of trying to protect me. It’s turned into OCD, honestly. But that’s for another article.

In that specific moment, without realizing it, I was treating more than just the physical cut. I was bandaging all the other wounds that have been quietly piling up since Little Me. Emotional wounds. The kind you don’t even know are still bleeding until something pushes them to the surface.

Sometimes we rush to find silver linings, to turn pain into purpose before we’ve actually let ourselves feel the pain. But unprocessed pain doesn’t disappear. It stores itself. And when left untouched, it resurfaces – in panic, in flashbacks, in relationships that echo old ones, in the way we flinch at kindness or silence or someone leaving.

Scars we forget – or try to forget – will always find a way to resurface. Often in confusing or inconvenient ways. Acknowledging what your heart needs gives it the chance to work with your mind instead of against it.

Because your heart wants to heal. But if you don’t give it space to figure out how – or even where to start – it’ll try to fix whatever’s closest. And that might not be you. It might be someone else. Someone who isn’t even bleeding.