Sunday Post 93: Avoiding the Vampire

I’m a chicken – always have been.  I have certain fears that I struggle to overcome.

One of them is needles.  I don’t mind a shot, but start digging in my veins for blood, and I almost keel  over.  In fact, I have before.  Yep, smelling salts followed by graham crackers and grape juice.

Embarrassing.

I don’t know why it freaks me out so much.  It really doesn’t hurt.  In fact, I had blood taken today – stressed out about it for an entire week.  When I got there, I did my usual warning to the phlebotomist,  “This is my least favorite thing to do all year.”

I say that in the hopes that if she is new, she’ll go find an experienced vampire to jab my inner elbow.

Her response today was, “Yea, that’s what everybody says.  You need to lie down?”

“Nah.”  Gonna take it like a man!

A friend of mine, who pokes people for a living, told me to cross my legs and to pick a random number and to start counting up by 7’s.  I hadn’t added twenty-one before it was over.

That’s not my only fear.  I’m scared of heights, closed in places (don’t put me by the window on an airplane – I need to be able to quickly access the exit), snakes, loss, hair on my back, and loneliness.  I do everything possible to skirt the things that make me uncomfortable.  What if instead I hit them head on?

I don’t think I’m going to purchase a box of needles and start digging them in my blood vessels.  But I could maybe do a better job of enjoying time alone, or putting myself out there in new situations.  I can always find something that keeps me from being in this house by myself.  There is always an excuse not to attend that school event without my wife.  Avoidance is easy, but it’s a band-aid.

There are a lot of things in life that need to be faced, not run from.  Half the battle is admitting what they are –

Posted by Danny Tanner on October 14, 2012

https://therealfullhouse.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/sunday-post-93-avoiding-the-vampire/