Narrative Essay, Untitled.

I don’t even know why I’m doing this, I think to myself. I hate blood, I despise needles, and oh my, a pint is pretty big.

I curse myself over and over as I walk down the narrow hallway of the building. The hallway was so long, yet this was fine with me as my mission at the end of the hallway was the one I did not want to reach. “All I had to do was politely reject,” I say aloud “But I had to say yes and sign that stupid form”.

I slow my pace down, taking my sweet time as I pretend to be engrossed in the posters on the wall. But even that was not a distraction. The walls hung arrows pointing to my destination, as if people were unaware of where to go. I take a deep breath and move forward once again. Ahead, two doors loom near, containing my worst fears.

I can almost imagine the horrors that are inside. Big people dressed in white holding sword size needles, awaiting my arrival. Smiles plastered on their faces as they get these needles ready for its purpose. I imagine me walking in and being stabbed with these swords, fainting, and then slowly dying as they suck the blood out of me. Then I would shrivel up into a bag of skin and bones and nobody would know it was me. They would hide me at first, and then throw my lifeless body into the chamber where they kept every other soul that dared to give blood.

These images play in my mind recurrently as I stop to catch my breath before I opened the doors. Oh man I think to myself as I step inside I wish I had brought someone along to witness this.

The first thing I see is an old man at a desk that didn’t look too pleased to be there. He was staring at me, so I figured I needed to go to him. I walk uncertainly towards him and tell him my name. He asks me to sign some forms, asks if I have appropriate identification, and tells me it will be a short time before I am helped. He then gives me a nametag, a book of rules and requirements, and points his bony finger towards the waiting area. As I turn to walk away, he whispers something inaudible and gives me a reassuring smile. Even though I had not heard, I nod my head and shuffle away.

I sit far away from those who are ahead of me. I recognized two of them as teachers from my school. I almost laugh as I realize both had the same look and posture. Their faces were sour, mouths pulled into a tight lipped grimace, hands folded in their lap, and eyes glued to the movements of vampires that would take their blood. An older couple seated on the other side was talking softly to each other. Besides me, that was it.

At my chair, I scribble my name on the tag and scan the book uninterested.

"Jeff McNeal, Diana Hardwick and Bob Silliman?" The head vampire calls in her next victims. The two teachers and the older man stand up and proceed into a line toward the lady. She stands in front of the waiting area, clipboard propped under one arm, pen behind her ear, hair pulled into a sloppy bun, smile evident but not clear. She nods at each of her victims as they walk out toward their death and then turns toward the older woman and me. "It will be about twenty minutes." She says.

I have to give her props for her appearance. She disguised very well. Although she was a fairly large woman with fair skin and a round nose, her eyes smiled to us like a rainbow after a rainy day. They were a dark shade of brown but I knew vampires didn't have colored eyes. There was only one explanation. This lady thought of everything, including buying colored contacts! Oh man.

I crane my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse to where they were headed. But they disappeared behind curtains that were far from transparent. I try and sit still but it was as if my legs and arms had minds of their own. I could feel the fear crawling up my skin, threatening to show itself any minute. I put my blood cold fingers to my burning face. They felt soothing against my skin but did little to bring the blood temperature down. The air in the room felt stuffy but the old lady seemed fine with it. And to top it all off, my stomach felt as if it were getting tighter every second.

"Are you alright honey?"

I turn my head to the older woman staring at me, eyes showing traces of concern. And somewhere, I found a little bit of comfort. I wanted to say no, to tell her how scared I was and how much I wanted to run out of this building and never look back. I wanted to tell her my stupid conclusions about how these people were vampires, my fear of needles, and how I thought the old man at the desk with the bony finger was weird.

"Fine. Just a little hot in here, that's all." I answer, forcing myself to smile a bit.

She smiles back and returns her attention to reading her magazine. I pull my knees up to my chest and rock back and forth. I rest my head and close my eyes. I thought about things to calm my nerves down. Reading. Writing. Music. Chocolate. As hard as I tried to think about something else, my thoughts always wandered back to the needle that would pierce my skin.

"Your first time?"

I look up, startled. The old lady again. "Um yes."

"Are you nervous?" She asks

"No." I say. What's wrong with this lady? Can't she see that I am trying to relax? The nerve of some people.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"You know, it's okay to be frightened-”

"I'm not."

"My husband and I have been giving blood for twenty years."

I stare at her. "Twenty years. Really?"

"Mmm-hmph" She murmurs half at the magazine, half towards me.

I didn't say anything back. I was still contemplating what she had just told me. Twenty years. Oh my.

"Your first time...were you...?" I trail off.

She looks up and raises her eyebrows "Was I scared? Why of course honey. Everybody is scared their first time."

I stare at her. "I'm afraid of needles."

She chuckles "Oh and that too. I remember my first day as if it were yesterday. I was shaking from head to toe. And you know what? I thought the doctors in here were filthy bloodsuckers. How stupid was that eh?"

I fake laugh "How stupid. You must have been super scared."

She laughs "Yes but you know what I should have realized? Something that would have made me feel better my first day."

"What?" I ask before she even finishes. I need all the advice I can get.

"It's okay to be scared."

Silence.

She continued. "Everybody gets scared. It's a part of life. Your teachers, your parents, your elders, even the people you look up to get scared once in a while."

Somewhere inside of me, the knots that were protruding my insides slowly loosened.

"Really?"

She nods. "But they beat these fears by facing them. And so next time they find themselves in a conflict with the same fear, they know exactly how to handle it."

I stare at her. She stared back. The silence was almost unbearable.

She puts her magazine down and picks up another one before speaking again "My daughter got her first tooth pulled years ago. Before we went to her appointment, she cried and cried for me to come inside with her to hold her hand."

"So?" I found myself saying. "She just wanted her mother, like all little kids do."

"She was twenty four."

I don't know why or even for how long, but I laughed at this. It was just so funny. In my mind, I imagined a grown woman at the dentist, crying for her mother. Then I started to laugh harder. The next thing I know, I was on the floor dying from the laughter that was uncontrollable. At first the lady stared at me. Then, she too broke out into heaps of laughter. Suddenly everything was funny to me. The weird old man got up from his desk to see what all the fuss was about. I looked up, and saw him standing there. His eyes were wide as if he had just saw his great grandmothers’ ghost, his slightly trembling withered hands were down at his sides, and he was looking at us as if we were committing a crime. We had stopped laughing for a moment, but seeing this old man bought us back into the shrieking laughter that pierced the air.

And so we both sat in the waiting room, laughing about absolutely nothing. The old man shook his head in disapproval and went back to his desk. I could have sworn I heard him mutter as he walked out, “It’s too early for this.”

"Ah-ahem."

The doctor with the pretty eyes stood in the doorway. Same posture, same board tucked beneath one arm, same pen over one ear. Except this time, she didn't look evil. She looked friendly, comforting.

She looks at me with smiling eyes. "Are you...?" She checks her board.

"Yes I am."

"Follow me then."

I quickly follow her out of the room. Before leaving, I turn around to the lady and mouth 'thank you'. She smiles and gives me two thumbs up.

In the hallway, the doctor asks me "Are you nervous?"

I think for a moment. "Yes but if I am going to be doing this for the next twenty years, that needle and I need to become best friends."

Looking back now, I realize my fear was not just about the needle. What I was afraid of was, just like anybody, that I would fail at controlling these fears and therefore, not be able to face them again. A quote that reminds me of this experience comes to mind when thinking about this particular moment in my life. Eleanor Roosevelt once said “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the things in which you think you cannot do.” Through this experience, I did gain strength, courage and confidence as a person, and now I anticipate every moment to overcome my fears.