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I am hearing a lot about blood and bleeding. "Doc, I'm bleeding here!" "What do I have to do, open a vein and bleed all over your rug?" And the occasional self-inflicted wound. Not real suicide attempts, just blood-letting.
I get that bleeding can be serious. Medically speaking, excessive bleeding can lead to bottomed out pressure, strokes, heart attacks. Anemia can lead to low oxygen carrying, tissue necrosis, organ failure. And, at least, it can be a harbinger of badness, injuries, ulcers, cancer. Aesthetically, it can be pretty shocking as well, spurting arterial bleeds, scarlett spatters on crisp white linens say horror like nothing else.
But I am finding that the invocation of bleeding doesn't draw me in like it used to. I flash back to my surgery days. Mostly, med students and surgical interns get to suck, clearing out oozing blood with a suction wand; so the higher ups have a clean view for cutting and sewing. You start to think of blood as an obstacle, a necessary nuisance or mess to be tidied; so you can get to the real work at hand.
I guess I could be desensitized or jaded from over-exposure. But, "Doc, I'm bleeding here" in my psych office doesn't say "Stat! Catastrophe!" as much as it says, " I'm coming apart at the seems, scared, angry, confused, and I don't know how to stop it." Psychiatry has its own suction. Diffusing the noise of panic, anxiety, rage, confusion in order to allow the heart of the problem some visibility. Like in surgery, this psychic bleeding can be overwhelming, flooding the field, and it needs attention. But often, it's symbolism is scarier than its meaning. I figure that when someone invokes bleeding, they are digging for the most visceral, deepest crimson metaphor they can to express core, unnamable feelings.
We all have our own reaction to red, red blood, often informed by culture, media, myths, but the evocation of this trump card means something different to and for each who plays it, consciously or unconsciously. Personally, blood in black and white, as seen in too many, neo-goth, Japanese horror movies, freaks me out the most. It says "dark vital life fluids are draining from this living soul like mythical humors of yore" much more than flashy red spatter with all it's diluted associations. GD
