El blog de Érika

I like to see blood run. Not in movies, not in this ruthless war that’s consuming the world, not in hospitals—none of that. I like to see blood run, literally. When a wound opens and that thick little drop bursts forth and falls to claim its place in the world, that’s the blood I like to see. Yes, call it a fetish or oddity—it’s not as if I boast of being a normal person, really—but when I cut myself with a can or prick my finger with a pin, after the customary curse comes the contemplation of that scandalous crimson liquid, because no one can deny that blood is dramatic even in the smallest amounts. It’s as if it were crying out for help each time it appears, as if threatening to keep flowing mercilessly with devastating effects. I love the watercolor it makes when I mix it with water trying to control it—a fight to the death, water and blood testing who will win. Yes, I like to see blood run, but I have no suicidal delusions. I enjoy it for a moment, then I try to stop it.

But that day, it didn’t want to stop. I thought it wasn’t serious: a kitchen knife, a perfect, symmetrical, clean cut. The index finger of my left hand—so precise when it comes to pointing— had surrendered to the aluminum, and a piece of skin hung by a thread, about to fall. But I couldn’t see that because everything was covered in blood: the finger, the hand, the clothes, the butcher knife, everything I could see was blood. But for some reason, it didn’t hurt; I was more worried about the picturesque mess forming around me. Everyone who tried to help ended up covered in my blood. I clearly remember my friend pressing the wound while unscrewing the alcohol bottle with the other hand, asking if I had AIDS. I looked at him as if he had opened the bathroom door while I was showering and said no. “Well, sorry, I’ve got two kids and a life ahead of me… and now I’ve got your blood everywhere.” I laughed, he laughed, and in less than five minutes my whole finger was bandaged, the tip looking like a lollipop.

When I got home, before going to bed, I changed the bandages. A little blood came out, but honestly, it was a great healing—no pain, no damage left. It really wasn’t a deep cut, just one of those skin slices that annoy for a few days but heal quickly. Still, I played with the drops of blood and the water in the sink. Suddenly, I remembered there are wounds that hurt more than the ones you make with a knife. Looking at my open, exposed, wounded, bleeding skin, I thought of recent events and realized there wasn’t much difference. Just a week earlier, an old wound had reopened, and as I imagined, it was taking a lot of effort to heal again.

I spoke to him again. Yes, the fifty-first, the sandman, the stranger, the cause of seventy percent of my deliriums and ninety-five percent of my sleepless nights over the last three years. Seeing my cracked, helpless index finger made me imagine that’s probably how my heart looked a few months ago: as if someone had sliced off a piece and it was bleeding in tiny drops. But I also remembered there had been someone there to help me clean that wound with alcohol —yes, that’s a metaphor, because I’m talking about liters and liters of tequila—someone I used to call a friend who stayed with me through the whole process, watching blood and tears run side by side, cursing in duet as we tried to exorcize the demons and master the complicated art of catharsis after heartbreak.

She accompanied me, watched over me, monitored me, and mostly made sure that my wound didn’t grow larger, because she was worried about the ghostly state heartbreak had left me in. She cared so much, so deeply, that she ended up learning a lot about him, knowing him almost as well as I did. Many, many months after all that, while observing the wound on my finger, I found myself opening a bigger one. I spoke to him again—only to realize that the woman he’d been talking to for months, the one he had even arranged a date with just days before, was precisely that friend who had stitched my skin, placed the bandages, and sang “heal, heal, little frog’s tail” when he put the final period on our almost-love story.

She hadn’t come into his life by accident, and that whole story about finding his number by mistake was a fantasy, a huge lie that ended up opening a hole in the part of my heart that was still intact. Because aside from realizing —painfully— that what we had was dead and buried, now I had to bury alongside it a friendship that had once been the most healing of balms and now weighed on me with the deepest disappointment and disbelief.

I don’t blame her. Maybe he’s not especially handsome or particularly attractive by conventional standards, but I do know how captivating his conversation can be, how enveloping his words, and how beautiful the universe looks through his sad green eyes. Getting attached to him or used to having him in your life isn’t hard, just as it isn’t hard to fall for the charm of his elusive promises and that transgressive personality packed with ego and self-love. Any woman with half a brain could find that mix interesting, so I’m not holding her responsible for that. But I do hold her responsible for keeping the story hidden under a cloak of feigned indignation and constant denial that placed me on the opposite side of the field, painting me as the attacker, the villain, the spiteful, malicious person with no discernment but a wild imagination.

The wound didn’t reopen because of the scenario I imagined about them being together. Nor did it reopen because a game —innocent at first— triggered a chain of events that drew her closer to him and further from me. None of that. I think the wound truly began to bleed again when the double face of that coin called friendship struck me across the back with a metal chair, leaving me unconscious and lying on the floor, mostly with the rage of realizing it wasn’t just a creation of my mind, even though she had denied it so vehemently and even made me feel guilty for my judgments and intolerance.It will heal, I’m sure. Whether you slice your finger with a knife or someone stabs you in the back, at some point the blood stops flowing and the wound scars over. And though I’ve confessed my little fascination with watching blood run (fine—in tiny, minimal cuts, because honestly, I can’t even watch a single movie with dismemberment), the happiest moment will always be that of healing, when days have passed and you see just a faint pink mark on your skin. Physical wounds become anecdotes. Soul wounds become deliriums.