Love is not enough.

I try to donate blood as often as I am able to. You have to wait 56 days between each donation and I mostly make an appointment within a week of being eligible again. I went yesterday and I was at the clinic for an hour and a half. This shit is supposed to take 20 minutes. The clinic I went to was pretty busy and full of old people, but the issue was more in the fact that every single test I had to take barely met the minimum to donate. To start, I had my hemoglobin checked three times. First two times it was 124 then lucky number 125 finally showed and she let me through. I've been taking iron capsules for four days so I don't know how that's possible.

I moved on to the questions, and went in the little cubicle to get my blood pressure and temperature checked. Temp shows barely minimum. Blood pressure shows incredibly low. Nurse says go eat and drink and I'll get you in 15 minutes. Fuck.

So now I've been here almost half an hour and the nurse checks everything again and everything shows I'm good to go. Then she asks how much I weigh. I tell her and ask what the minimum is and she says 110. I cannot understand how someone could think I weigh less than that but given the fact I barely met everything else, I'm not surprised she asked.

I wait a bit more and I get put in the chair. Needle's in, blood's coming out at a good pace. I'm done in fewer than seven minutes. What the fuck? I always take hardly any time to fill the blood bag but my vital signs show that I'm barely alive every time I donate.

I've basically become a gym rat with a number of supplements I can just barely keep track of and I eat a healthy diet. I'm 20. I should be fit as a fucking fiddle. It's like my negative attitude, my nihilistic philosophy, my constant state of irritability, and overall spiteful consideration of people manifest themselves in my physical state. My blood is black and hardly moves. I wonder about the people who get my blood transfused into them. If it even works. If they get it injected and the doctor says "Well, looks like you might still die." I wonder if their moods swing suddenly into a dark realm of bad intentions or if all at once, they feel like they're 30 years older than they really are.

It's kind of funny how before I donate, I usually feel like I could pass out if I stand up too fast or like I can't get a good grip of the earth below my feet. But I get the needle in and the blood pumps out and I feel revitalized and feel so much more alive than before. It's like my blood is bad and toxic and getting it out makes my body better. It blows the smoke out of my brain.

Most people donate blood to be good people and perform their human duties. I do it for the entirely selfish reason that I like the needle and the euphoria from getting the blood removed. And this makes it almost evil.